Getting the Boat Ready

As most of you know, we are finally leaving Alaska.  We came for a year in 2015 and it will be just a couple weeks shy of 8 years when we finally cross the border into Canada.  When we got to Sitka, we took a storage unit to get a lot of non everyday stuff off the boat and free up the forward cabin for visitors.  Well, after four years, the storage unit became packed and so did the forward cabin again. 

We have been mercilessly going through and trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible, while putting items needed for cruising back on the boat.  

We are also trying to purchase the items we would like to have for the boat from LFS while we still have Pauline’s employee discount.  This included 10 gallons of bottom paint for our quick haul out when we get down to Washington as well as two new DC panels (welcome to the 21st century).  They were a pretty big job as we made all new wire harnesses as well.  The great news is, no flickering lights anymore and no equipment turning itself off and on plus we have lots of room to add more circuits if required.

Panel in Main Salon

Main DC Panel

 

We also purchase a StarLink unit so hopefully we can post things from those remote anchorages. 

the Starlink satellite antenna

 

We have ordered a new cranse iron and bobstay bracket to be mounted in Washington as well as a new forestay.

We also got rid of our Northern Lights generator and big water maker.  The big generator was always troublesome and we were tired of throwing lots of money at it, so we pulled it.  Northern Lights generators are normally very reliable but ours has not been and we have spent a lot trying to get it right.  So in the end with less than 3000 hours on it, we gave it away.  Our water maker required a big generator to power it after we converted the engine drive over to an ac motor so we took that out and gave it away as well.  We will replace it with a new more efficient modern one before we get to Mexico which means we will probably put it in when we reach San Diego while we wait for hurricane season to finish and make that dash down to the Sea of Cortez.  Anyway it will be a busy year.