Travel 2016-2017
Ready for Company
Step 1: Clean everything. This means everything must come out of the locker it was in.
The locker must be scrubbed.
In some cases, the things from the lockers must be scrubbed.
And then aired out for a week before going back into the locker.
When we moved aboard, we brought a bunch of stuff we might need. Some of it we haven’t touched in three years.
Things we found in lockers that were a surprise are emphatically not going back onto the boat. If we didn’t need it before, we don’t need it now, and we’re unlikely to ever need it again.
Meanwhile, actually useful things are airing out in the main saloon.
Sheesh, we have a lot of stuff.
The bulkiest and most awkward items are the folding bikes. And they’re in the back of Squire (the car) until we figure out what to do with them.
That leaves the V-berth open for company.
Hint. Hint.
Bonus!
Throwing out the stuff that we haven’t used frees up storage for guests to wedge stuff when they visit. Guests. In the V-berth. Where there’s plenty of room because the bikes are gone.
Hint.
The dive masks got washed today. We seem to have five masks between the two of us.
The snorkels also got soaked in the bucket to get them sparkling clean.
Of course, it’s the Chesapeake. It’s turbid. And has jellyfish. So the diving is mostly unpleasant.
But.
When we head south again, we’ve got the diving and snorkeling covered.
Port lights
Some time in 2015-ish era, CA was closing the aft port light and the clamp that screws it down hard against the gasket failed catastrophically. I can’t find the picture, put the metal failed, leaving the hatch not fully closed and — consequently — dripping onto the aft berth.
Here’s the link to the Beckon Parts page: https://www.beckson.com/latches.html.
We had what they call the “safety twist knobs.” Lots and lots of ‘em.
The replacement is the latch.
The tricky part is getting the old knob out. There’s a pin that secures the assembly to the port body via two “pin bosses.”
There are two approaches.
Here: https://www.beckson.com/retro.html. File out the crimp in the threads and unscrew the knob.
And the alternative, which is to bang out the old pin and put in an entirely new assembly.
Banging out the old pin is hard. Really hard. A few would not budge. One of the bosses was cracked, so we didn’t want to bang on that any more than necessary.
