Today we were carpenters, tomorrow we will be plumbers

With Wild Horses still on land (more on this later), Mike and I have had the chance to finish several of our boat projects.  In the last few weeks, we have designed, deconstructed, painted, glued, mixed, waxed, sanded, washed, taped (oh so much green painter’s tape!), sawed, plumbed and organized.  To say it has been a mixed bag of work is a huge understatement.  But such is boat work!
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What has all this amounted to?

• We have a beautiful new swim platform: This was several days of deconstruction, adding four layers of epoxy protection to the gelcoat and then a few days to do the “wow” steps of installation

• We have started the work to make our stern water lazarette usable: We are adding a subfloor to prevent water intrusion through the bottom thru-hull
• Our missing bow thruster has been painted with antifouling paint and installed: Picture perfect and solidly in place with a new sacrificial anode also installed (What the heck is a sacrificial anode? Sacrificial anodes are easily corroded materials deliberately installed in a system to be sacrificed to corrosion, leaving the rest of the system relatively corrosion free.  Thanks Google!)​
• The hull is washed and waxed. If you think this is an easy job, here is the math: 47 feet long by 5 feet tall multiplied by 2 sides to the hull multiplied again by 2 wax applications plus 1 step ladder.  Ugh, exhausting.
• The boat bottom has had a new layer of antifouling applied: Not hard work, just messy!
• All seacocks have been tested and are good to go – whew!

Most of this work took several days to complete so we were multi-tasking to use our time efficiently.  At one point I think we had all our tools and materials out at once!  And the most important part of the work we have finished is that it was all critical work that has to be done with the boat out of the water.  No, wait, the most important part is that it is now in our rear-view mirror 😉.

We are thrilled with our completed boat work but the big news for us is that we now have a launch date.  This has been a complicated puzzle to navigate between lockdowns, dock installation, and the house closing date.  Suffice to say, there wasn’t a direct alignment between the Ontario government allowing boating and Wild Horses being in the water.  But we have found a window that works!  Wild Horses will be launched June 10.
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So, are we done with our boat projects?  Nope!  We have two weeks to launch and several more projects to do including installing our new solar panels, lithium batteries and upgraded alternator and, yes, a little plumbing work with our waste tanks.