Well, we’re off!  But not on the boat.  Unfortunately, we’re in the car.  But it IS sailing-adjacent.  We are on our way to Annapolis, Maryland for two things.  First, we are both enrolled in a week of classes at Cruisers University.  Hopefully, by taking a bunch of classes from actual long-distance sailors, we will successfully set out and not kill ourselves.  The week will be full of fascinating stuff:  Diesel engine maintenance and repair, weather forecasting, knot-tying, sail care, provisioning, watermaker repair, and more.  And Kim is taking a TWO-DAY class called “She’s a Cruiser”.  I am sure there are jokes in there somewhere.  This will be quite a shift from the last seminar series I attended with fascinating topics like “When is a Sore Throat Strep?”, “Constipation-It’s Hard to Treat”, and “When is Bedwetting Abnormal?”

We will also get a chance to check out that mecca of Sailordom:  the Annapolis Sailboat Show.  This is THE show for sailors so it should be pretty cool.  We’ll let you know about both the cool and the wacky stuff we encounter.

Of course, our original plan was to SAIL to Annapolis for this week.  Obviously, THAT didn’t happen.  Our new plan is to head south at the end of this month, but there may be some health care issues that delay that.  And boat issues.  Don’t forget the boat issues.

This last week has been a little frustrating as we continue to encounter stuff that doesn’t work.  Fortunately, at least it hasn’t been expensive stuff because, well, we’ve already replaced all the expensive stuff (except the engine-fingers crossed).

Off to the trash heap-sure looks good with some new paint, though.

Meraviglia has 3 bilge pumps.  These pumps are sort of important, since they keep the boat from sinking-if she develops a leak, the water drains into the bilge and the bilge pumps pump it out.  Of our 3 pumps, two are electric, automatic, and brand new.  And they both failed to work this week.  Yeah, I know, we’re feeling cursed too.  Anyway, now we have two new, new electric bilge pumps.  They both worked when we left Georgia.  Since the old new ones weren’t working, we decided we should probably test our emergency manual bilge pump.  This is a big one with a handle that we pump if the electric pumps can’t keep up, i.e. when we’re in deep shit.  We tried it.  Surprise!  It didn’t work.  No problem!  We have a service kit.  So we installed the new valves and bellows.  Still no luck.  We replaced the hoses next.  Nope.  Nothing.  Finally, we pulled the entire pump and took it to the sandblaster to clean it up (I’m going to add “sandblasting” to my resume).  It was pretty corroded.  After blasting it and repainting it, we tested it again.  Guess what?  Yep!  Into the dumpster it went.  We ordered a new one.

I also replaced the fuel manifold.  That’s the valve system that controls which diesel tank feeds the engine.  The existing one was a relic and the valves didn’t turn.  So, now we have a manifold that will actually let us use our new diesel tank-luxury!

Circa 1987
Those valves do NOT move
New manifold!

The rest of the week was filled with a variety of mini-projects:  re-caulking some leaky chainplates, fixing a leaky hatch (notice a theme?), installing some hooks in the cabins, starting to build out our anchor bridle, and installing a new boom vang.  The list IS getting smaller, but the problem is that things keep getting added almost as fast as we check them off.  Such is life with an old boat.

Anyway, next post from Annapolis!