My dock neighbor Bill is highly impressed with the lazarette. Yesterday he was working on his new system for storing/deploying his tender. He needed to open up this bracket a bit, so I volunteered Mahalo's vice. It's wonderful having a vice on board!
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Included in our contract is full canvas for the boat. Every exterior seating area, tables, bbq, tender, front windshield, even the windlass. Great working with Brady and Stephanie of www.canvassupply.net/ Finished cockpit table, settee and rear enclosure. I had them do a cutout for my rear facing camera after seeing how this affected the view on other boats. Not five minutes after the cover went on the tender, a seagull crapped on it. REALLY? Is this how it is going to be?????
I'm having a rack made for the kayaks, and eventually I'll have Canvas Supply do a cover for them as well. Been kind a light on the blog posts lately as we have been very busy with outfitting, provisioning and more commissioning in Seattle. Five day countdown till we leave for our first real trip. Seems like so long ago that I made this blog post regarding ordering our Hobie Mirage inflatable kayaks. They have been sitting in the garage at home awaiting sea duty! These are the travel cases they come in. In a post a few days ago you saw me lifting them up to the FB deck with the davit. I secured them here for the trip over to Liberty Bay. And today is the day we get these in the water for the first time. Here is the first one partially inflated. It takes 6-8 minutes of pumping to complete the job. Everything is so well engineered on these. The inflation valves are awesome, there's a position where they are one way, i.e. you can push air in but it can't come out. At the Hampton Rendezvous I asked one of the other owners if he used his davit to lower the kayaks into the water, and he said he carries them down the stairs. Hmmm. Also you can that in this state it looks more like a SUP (Stand Up Paddleboard) and indeed that is one of the configurations. It wasn't "too bad" getting it downstairs like this. For the second one I installed the seat while up on the FB deck and then made a hokey bridle for lowering. This was way better. That hole you see up front is where the pedal assembly is inserted. If you want to use it as a SUP, you leave the seat off and then there's a plastic "plug" for the hole. Fully rigged and in the water. These are so stable, and the seating position is great for entry & exit off the swim step. We did fine for our first time and I'm sure we'll make the process even more foolproof. A short video from the seating position. Deb really enjoyed the ride and stability. I didn't show it in the video, but you steer with a hand controlled rudder.,
I used the davit to return them to the boat deck and in the process of moving them around hurt my shoulder a bit (recurring rotator cuff problems). I have been thinking about storing/deployment since then and have a few ideas. We'll play this out in upcoming blog posts. Today we head out for two days & nights. Our first time over night at anchor. We are stocked and stoked!
And it's time to finally load the kayaks. Having a hydraulic davit with a wireless remote is one sweet boy toy. The inflatable kayaks are bulky and that rig weighs about 45 lbs, so I appreciated the lift. Time to cruise! Yesterday I kind of took it easy and worked on some basics. One of them was a plastic hanging hook. But when installed it I found the hole was too small on the thing I was hanging. The sharp knife on my Leatherman can cut it, but holding it without getting cut was another matter. Having this machinist's vice on the workbench is wonderful. Don't know if I have shown the air compressor before? This is inside the engine room, over the air conditioning pump array. Just what you need when it is time to inflate fenders. This little hose I bought is awesome. 1/4" by 50', Flexzilla brand. Light, small, best air hose I have ever had. This is a slide out shelf I had designed for a printer (under the TV cabinet). I want to be able to print on board. This is a wireless Canon printer. Got it all set up on the network and can now print from the helm computer and my laptop. Awesome. When we got to the boat I found a huge mess at one of the outdoor handles. Some bird had landed there and did what birds do (doodoo?). My first thought was "crap, this is going to be like a half hour project by the time I get a hose out, hook it up, clean up, put it away...." and then I remembered my built in hose with high pressure pump! This is under the table in the cockpit. Flip on the breaker, drag the hose out, rinse, scrub, rinse again and voila, clean boat. Video shows last few feet of retraction. And, oh yeah, official stickers arrived. We are legal WA boaters now.
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