We live on our boat and don’t have that anymore….

10/7/14
Nabb’s Creek, Chesapeake Bay
Posted by Bill

The boat projects the last few days have gone the typical way of boat projects. First up was replacing the bilge pump. It sits in the bottom of the bilge beyond arms reach by about a foot and it is attached to a metal bracket that you have to unbolt and lift up to gain access to the pump. Problem is, someone before us installed a through hull just above the pump and in the middle of the bilge so you can’t pull it up to access it. The through hull is for the air conditioning/heating and we will have to pull the boat out of the water to remove the through hull allowing us to work on the pump…not too smart. It will add several hundred dollars to the replacement cost to have the boat hauled. I thought I could maneuver around the through hull, but after several hours of trying…I cannot.

Second project was to replace the wiring connector for the mast lights. When we had the mast lowered and later raised, the original connector fell victim to old age and corrosion during the process. I bought a new connector at Riverview Marina where we had the mast put back up but was just now getting around to the project. Problem is, the connector I bought will not accept wires that are as big as one side of the mast wiring. So off to West Marine using Mike’s car. They don’t have what I need, so project 3…replace the batteries in the boat.

The batteries are 3 1/2 years old and need to be replaced. This is not something you want to have to deal with without access to stores and a car. It takes 4 batteries and they weigh at least 90 pounds each. I was able to find suitable replacements without taking out a loan (lol), so I got them back to the house and drug them down to the boat, and brought the old ones back to the truck. By now I am exhausted, but it appears that the new batteries are working as they should be. Thank god you only have to do this every 3-4 years.

One out of 3 ain’t bad as boat projects go. Thanks again to Mike and Sue for the use of their car and being tied up to their dock.

While recuperating, I get a phone call from a company taking a survey. They want to talk to me about home communications systems and wonder what type of TVs and cable service we have. I tell the lady we live on our boat and we don’t have that anymore. She lets out a big belly laugh and promptly ends the call. It made me think about how different life has been afloat thus far. We do have flat screen TVs on the boat with digital antennas but we just don’t watch them. Except for these last 5 days in Nabb’s Creek, we get up just before dawn, check the oil, prep the boat for passage, make coffee and get moving. At the end of the day, we make dinner or go to a local restaurant, check the weather, check the tide schedule, plan the passage for the next day, and go to bed. Passage planning takes quite a bit of time. It is so dependent on the weather and tide, and you need to have a primary destination with bail out options if you don’t make the speed you expected, or if the anchorage or marina is full. It is so different than the way we used to live. I think about how much time we used to spend in front of a television and it seems so wasteful to me, almost totally detached from the natural world around us. It is a very interesting change.

2 thoughts on “We live on our boat and don’t have that anymore….

  1. Andrea

    So glad you are enjoying yourselves…………..happy for you and keep the pictures coming………….we sure do enjoy them

    Reply

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