A GREAT time on the boat!

We've spent a lot of time aboard our boats over the years but I must say, the entire family seems to agree the last 5 days we had aboard were the best ever.  We had SUCH a great winter break together!  The last few days we mostly spent relaxing.  Even our dog, Daisy, got in on the relaxing via her naps in the salon:

Daisy honestly never enjoyed our trawler.  She would sit and cower in the aft stateroom and just did not look super happy the entire time we were aboard.  Not on our new boat though!  She seems very much at home, relaxed, and happy.  I think she likes all the extra space.  Due to the winds blowing the last half this week pretty much non-stop at 20-30 mph though we had not done much boating!  Saturday we  were planning on going home but everyone was having fun hanging out on the boat relaxing so we never got around to actually going home.  :)  We had some friends from a couple of docks over come say hi and tour our "new" boat.  We hadn't seen some of them pretty much all winter so it was fun to talk boats and catch up with them.  My broker Steve had told us he and his family may go to a well known restaurant in the area for dinner.  Our friends Terry, his family, and Tommy and his son told us during their visit they were going there too in their boats.  So before we knew it we were underway to Steve's Landing restaurant which is a 10 mile cruise up the river.  This was the first time underway on the 4550 for my wife and our daughter (and Daisy!) so it was a lot of fun.  Their Ribs have been reported to be incredible and I must concur- they were great!!  Terry and his wife own a newer sistership to our boat...the 4788.  Here they are as they are pulling into the docks at Steve's Landing:

We had a great dinner and despite it still being winter, the place was packed!  Our cruise home was a nighttime affair.  Yet again we find how much the pilothouse simply is wonderful!  We had a great time with Tarne and I and the kids as we following our radar and GPS (and Terry's boat as lead!).  We had fun with the kids laughing and telling stories the entire way back to our marina.  A picture of our pilothouse as we cruised home in the dark:

We also took this week to work on some projects.  One of those was getting the dinghy davit winch motor working so we could raise/lower the dinghy.  I took apart the motor and this is what I found...one new solenoid and one very old/rusted solenoid:

I called the company that made the winch motor and ordered a new solenoid on the hopes that is all it was.  They overnighted it to us and I installed it (learning on the process that the winch motor is hard wired it seems b/c the switch on the panel sure doesn't kill the power to it!!).  This may be the first boating project that was completed in about 30 minutes and for only $28.   :)  So...this morning I could not resist anchoring out so that we could test out the dinghy.  This would let us test the windlass for the anchor AND test the dinghy which makes it a win-win event.  We cruised over to one of our nearest anchorages and dropped both a hook AND the dinghy.  Good news is that the dinghy davit and winch worked great, the dinghy is awesome, and we had a blast.  The dinghy that came with the boat is a 2003 11' RIB and a 2003 Mercury 15hp 4 stroke outboard.  Compared to our little 9' RIB with the old 6hp outboard it had, the new dinghy FLIES!  Wow is it fast!  The kids and I had a great time zipping around the cove buzzing by the "mothership" and having fun.  

A few pictures of our boat from the dinghy:

Sarah on one of our dinghy rides:

Heading back to the boat:

All in all....I can't wait for summer!!!  We are glad every system works on the boat thus far.  We even tested the washer/dryer this week and it works (dries a little slow as do all combo units on boats).

COME ON SUMMER!!     :)

Mountains and Boats

This week has been winter break for the kids.  The county we live in has a unique school schedule in that they go to school earlier in the year than other schools but they get a week of essentially once every 6 weeks throughout the school year.  It's a pretty nice schedule if you want to do fun things with the family!  We were initially going to go to FL for the week but realized at the last minute that the water in the Treasure Island area would be too cold for the kids to swim so we quickly came up with a plan B this past Saturday morning.  We have rented some great cabins in the Nantahala mountains of western NC and they are always fun...hot tub, great views, pool table inside, very nice place!  So we rented a cabin for 3 days.  I used to live a few miles away while I was in grad school at Western Carolina University so we know the area well.  We had a great, great time.  We took the kids hiking on (my beloved!) Appalachian Trail (trivia fact for those reading this blog that you may or may not know...I have hiked the entire 2,160 mile A.T. from Georgia to Maine not once but twice).  We brought our dog with us this week so she got to go hiking as well.  Here is everyone at one of the shelters about a mile from the Nantahala Outdoor Center:

And yes, a nice glass of wine on our last night there, taken before hopping in the hot tub and star gazing!

But hey, we are here to talk boating, right?  We came down to the boat yesterday (Wednesday) after a lovely drive from the cabin cutting through some great backroads.  One system I had not yet tested on the boat was something that I could wait no longer to try out. What critical system is this you may ask?  Yes- you are right- the OVEN!  We baked a pizza for dinner last night and had a blast doing it.  Next I shall have to test it again and bake some brownies.  The cooktop we knew worked fine but I had to test out the oven with pizza:

And no visit to the boat would be complete without some projects.  I can't remember if I had posted about it or not previously but the first day we were leaving Iuka, MS to bring the new boat to Chattanooga, and in fact within seconds of firing up the engines to go, the base of the pilothouse helm chair had cracked.  The entire assembly is all metal except for the one piece that attaches the seat to the post.  Needless to say it made for a wobbly journey.  Here is the offending broken piece:

 

A matching metal base at same bolt pattern could not be found so I had to have a metal mounting plate fabricated to match the bolt pattern of the seat and another bolt pattern for the new metal base I had bought online.  A friend of mine was gracious enough to fabricate the metal plate for me via his company's machine shop:

And all attached!  I am happy to no longer have a rocking chair for a pilothouse helm chair.  :)

That was the easy project.  This next one...a bit more work.  While our 45 has just a fraction of the exterior teak our trawler had, the teak was in bad shape.  It looked like it had leprosy.  It was pealed up everywhere, discolored, poorly applied, etc.  Unfortunately it was so far gone the only real option was to strip it all down and start over.  Here is what the toe rail looked like earlier today:

And after about 5.5 hours with a heat gun and scraper, this is what it looks like now:

 

I am nowhere near done with the teak obviously.  All I have done is get the old finish off and take it down to bare wood.  Now I will have to go back and sand it to get it all to a uniform color (some is faded grey, some is not, etc.) and smooth it all out to prep for new varnish.  I think I am going to go with Epiphanes "wood finish clear."  I used it on our trawler and liked the results and it can be built up without having to sand between coats and you can do multiple coats per day.  The cockpit combing is varnish free right now but all greyed out so I will also have to sand it down to clean wood and then we will varnish it all with probably 8-10 coats.  Yes....this is going to take a while!

Last night was the first night my wife and daughter had spent the night aboard so it has been a lot of fun.  We are cleaning and organizing (it seems I am not the best at cleaning the inside like I thought I had haha) and seeing what works best for storing everything.  Depending on the weather tomorrow we hope to cruise around a little bit and have fun on the river but we will see what the weather brings.  If it is not good I ordered a new solenoid for the dinghy davit winch as it seems to only want to spool in one direction and not the other.  I am hoping it is just the solenoid but we shall see.  

Our general  to do list in case you are curious:

1) Get davit winch working.

2) Refinish exterior teak.

3) Big compound and wax for hull and topsides.

4) Rebed everything on the flybridge to make sure no issues.  We had no leaks during our (rainy) delivery trip but I'd rather be proactive.

5) Scrub and clean the engine room- this will be a "man weekend" for just my son and I...pretty sure my wife and daughter will not see the fun in this task! 

6) Haul out for insurance survey.  We want to adjust our insurance so we need to do a haul out and full survey on the boat.  It will be interesting to see the bottom as we did not haul out prior to purchasing it as we were very comfortable with what we were buying.  

Stay tuned....

Home Sweet Home!

If you read our previous posts you know we had to park our boat at Hales Bar Marina at MM 431 since Sunday due to Chickamauga Lock being closed due to high flood waters.  It was frustrating to say the least.  We decided yesterday to go ahead and cruise her up the river more.  When we left in the morning the lock was still closed and appeared it would be closed all day.  There are docks in downtown Chattanooga 6 miles below the dam though so we figured if it did not open we would have to stay there.  Thankfully though the lock opened just as we were getting to downtown!  YIPPIE!  I can't tell you how much this delay has made me want to just hurry up and get the boat to our home marina at Island Cove.  My good friend and broker that works with me, Steve,  came today to help me make the last run up the river.  It was originally forecasted to be a nice sunny day with chance of showers in the afternoon.  I always said I wanted a pilothouse so as to not worry about the weather and I guess God wanted to have me live that out because it started pouring rain just as we were getting to the boat!  Oh well...another rainy day on the river but at least no real fog and it was cozy in the pilothouse.  The first section of the river above Hales Bar is called "the gorge" due to it's windy and twisty path, mountains right up to the edge, and remote nature.  It is a pretty stretch of the river for sure.  

Here is a view in the morning as we were getting underway with mist and fog:

It was about a 35 mile run to downtown Chattanooga but it was nice to get there.  You can see at shoreline some posts sticking out of the water.  That is usually where the waterfront wall is.  The wall is completely under water and what you are seeing are the power poles to plug into shore power when staying on the fixed wall in downtown:

We made it to the lock but as luck would have it, the Bearcat tug was locking down a bunch of barges. We ended up having to idle around below the lock for an hour before we could lock through.  Here you can see all the construction they are doing on the lock as they are working on building a new replacement lock.  Some of the barges in tow with the Bearcat are tied up to the mooring cells just to the starboard of my bow pulpit:

The "Anne" work tug that shuttles around the construction crew and does small jobs around the lock for the construction:

Another tow from the Bearcat coming down through the lock:

The "bow" of the barges being pushed down to the downstream mooring cells so that we can lock up out of their way:

The Bearcat itself pushing her tows along:

Steve helping me out with locking through as we begin to ride up Chickamauga Lock with the rising lock waters:

And finally...afloat and underway on Cickamauga Lake!!!!

Right next to the lock there is a condo tower development.  As we were below the lock I had posted a mobile picture of us waiting at the lock on my facebook page.  Some clients and friends live in one of the condos.  As we came out of the lock I got a call from them asking if that was us coming out of the lock as they had just seen our facebook page update!  So- they graciously went out and took some pictures of us passing them underway.  How cool is that?!  Thanks Ann and Ray!!!!

And finally, the sweet sight of our "new" boat in our new slip at our home marina.  We got in just after dark but boy did it feel good to be home!

What a wonderful trip we had.  We put about 45 hours on the main engines and the boat ran simply awesome.  We have not even had to chance a single fuel filter or anything the entire way.  I can't tell you how please we are with how the boat ran...all systems functioning, comfortable, a joy to pilot, and really...I can't believe she is actually ours.  :)  Now that we are home we can finally start really organizing her and getting her set up the way we want.  We are going to replace the cross-hatch valance material in the main salon (too pediatrician office looking!) and the floral stuff in the master stateroom and a few other things, along with completely redoing her exterior teak and a big buff and compound of her exterior fiberglass. Stay tuned as we do that work and hopefully we will have her dressed up and ready to go by spring!