When Dante was about 3 years old we were driving in the mountains and came across a mudslide across the road. From the back seat I heard Dante’s little voice proclaim confidently, “My dad could fix that.” Even at three years old, Dante could see that Darold was a handy man.
And it’s a good thing because there is always something to fix on the boat.
Darold did a ton of work to the boat before we left (every weekend for years) in the hopes that we wouldn’t have a lot to fix while on this journey. Darold’s hard work has enabled us to move faster than the average cruiser. When we were in Colon, Panama, the dockmaster at the marina we were at said that our boat must be very god condition if we had traveled from California to Panama in 3 months.
Despite this, there has always been something that has needed repairing, adjusting, maintaining or servicing. The free time we thought we had has been hard to come by. To give you an idea, here is a list of all of the work that Darold has done in the past 8+ months. (Keep in mind that these are the more major fixes, I am not including routine inspections or small fixes.)
- Bled the first auto pilot twice (California and Mexico)
- Fixed magnets inside water/wind generator (Mexico)
- Installed a new macerator (don’t ask…) (Mexico)
- Installed a new faucet for filtered fresh water (Mexico)
- Installed a new auto pilot (Panama)
- Repaired water maker leak(Panama)
- Replaced wash down pump (Panama)
- Installed a “tank tender” (which tells us how much water we have in our water tanks) (Georgia)
- Repaired a ripped mainsail (Jamaica)
- Installed two new sending units (which tells us how much diesel we have) (Puerto Rico and Georgia)
- Stripped varnish off rub-rails and re-varnished with coats (Puerto Rico)
- Waxed boat hull (Puerto Rico)
- Polished all the stainless on the topsides (Jamaica and Puerto Rico)
- Installed new line for traveler (Puerto Rico)
- Installed new cockpit speakers (Puerto Rico)
- Waxed boat top sides (Bahamas)
- Installed toilet seat chokes (Bahamas)
- Tried to fix ailing generator then de-commissioned and donated it to Exuma Land and Sea Park (Bahamas)
- Installed two foot pumps (for fresh and salt water) (Panama and Bahamas)
- Installed all new hose for the entire head (toilet) (Florida)
- Had solar panel arms welded (Georgia)
- Installed a new generator (Georgia)
- Re-built the macerator (Georgia)
- Changed engine oil every 150 hours
- Changed generator oil every 20 hours
- Un-installed auto pilot and sent it to manufacturer (Georgia)
- Re-installed fixed auto pilot (TBD!)
- Troubleshoot navcom error (still in progress)
- Probably a dozen other things I’ve forgotten….
- PLUS the zillion other things that I haven’t mentioned (because I was too daunted to read through Darold’s comprehensive spreadsheet of repairs…)
OK, it was actually me and Dante who waxed the top sides and polished the stainless. But Darold did all the rest. Lest you think that I was resting on my laurels (or something else) while Darold was doing all that fixing, I was provisioning, doing laundry, cleaning the boat, cooking or conducting homeschool. Say what you want about dividing labor along gender lines; it works for us.
This list doesn’t cover all the trip planning that needs to be done (plotting our course, researching the destination, tracking weather, etc.) In case you ever wondered what we did with all our free time, as our cruising friend once said to us, “I’ll tell you when I have some.”
