 |
"Slick," a neighbor's cat who adopted me
when but a roaming kitten (actually
named Ozzie by its owners, Roger & Josie). He assisted yesterday by overseeing my
winter preparations of Chip Ahoy, beginning with off-loading everything
that's coming into the house. Slick would make a great boat-cat;
he seems to enjoy roaming about the deck, climbs up the ladder and joins me
whenever I'm out there working aboard and he's around. He loves
crawling through open cabin lockers to beneath the cockpit, exploring
the bilges. (Nov. 11,
2006) |
 |
Chip Ahoy's original intake and exhaust fuel
locker cowl vents. Last
spring I looked into getting them re-chromed -- but it would have taken
too long as I was preparing to launch. I decided to wait until fall, then send them off over
the winter.
Chrome-plated cast brass, they are the
best quality I've seen -- more substantial than the after-market models
I've looked at. They'll be perfect with a new coat of
chrome plating. I shipped them off to
South Shore Plating
Co.
today. (Nov. 17, 2006) |
 |
The cowl vents came back from the rechromer in Quincy on
Dec. 4th: chromed, polished, and looking like new if not better!
SEE:
The Fuel
Locker Cowl Vents: Before and After |
 |
One of the annual steps in winterizing Chip Ahoy after
removing the VHF antenna coax cable is to seal the deck cable connector (Blue Sea
CableClam). I cut a small circle from an old inner tube
(bottom-center), then insert it above the tapered rubber stopper through which
the cable runs when it's connected. (Nov. 18, 2006) |
 |
Once the cable connector is reassembled, it's water-tight for
the winter and spring, until I raise the mast to launch, connect the
antenna cable. Next spring I have to replace the coax cable due to
the lightning damage last summer. |
 |
Chip Ahoy, emptied and ready to move to its winter
parking location alongside the house. Everything that was aboard
has been moved indoors, much onto the front porch, boxed and waiting to
be sorted, cleaned and stored away for the winter. The batteries
are stored on a piece of plywood in the laundry room, soon to be hooked up to the battery
charger. |
 |
Chip Ahoy parked where it'll remain for the next four or
five months. Wally Riddle's "Carpe Diem" is parked further back
alongside the house. It was a comfortable day to work outside, but
is likely the end of a stretch of unseasonably warm temperature in the
high-50s - low-60s, though it rained all week until today. |
 |
Tomorrow I'll get Chip Ahoy's
PVC
skeleton frame set up over the mast and hopefully the boat covered with
its tarps. Wally is coming by on Monday to empty out the leaves
and cover "Carpe Diem" too. |
 |
Today I dug out the PVC pipes from behind the shed and
laid them out alongside the boat. When I
removed them last spring,
I numbered each with a supposed "waterproof" Magic Marker, so
I could put them back in the proper order. The
markings had disappeared, washed off, darn. (Nov. 19, 2006) |
 |
After figuring out the order and position of each, I
lashed them to the lifelines and stern pulpit. |
|
NEXT |
|
It's never-ending ... but Sailing Season '06 has ended -- bring on
'07! |
