- Things we did this weekend… Worked a ton more on the boat. Downloaded a decent stash of ebooks for my Kindle. Did some provisioning at my favorite (Trader Joe’s) and least favorite (Walmart) places to shop. Got Oliver’s nails did (aka trimmed and filed). Ordered a new foulie (Columbia brand — thanks Kelley!). Watched the Oscar’s (even though we haven’t seen any of the movies nominated). Finished a Project Life spread. Organized a ton of stuff so that it’s ready to get moved on the boat. And booked a last minute photo sesh for later this week (yay!). Busy, productive weekend if I do say so myself.
- So, Oliver has completely designated ^^our upside down dinghy^^ on the deck as his own personal dog house. I’m pretty sure he expects Jereme or I to add a comfy dog bed, a big bowl of water, and maybe a few toys, because he is seriously right at home under there. And he looks so darn cute, it’s hard for me to argue. Surprisingly, the area underneath is quite spacious and keeps rather cool considering. I don’t blame him for taking up shop underneath. He’s definitely one smart poodle!
- Yikes! I just realized I do NOT have a cheese grater in my stash of “galley gear.” Why wouldn’t I have saved a cheese grater to keep on the boat? That is so unlike me. See, me and cheese are total BFF’s. Cheese is a necessity in my life and, I’m pretty sure, I will need a grater on the boat for various galley cooking. If we are able to find/purchase decent cheese in the islands, I’m assuming it will probably be in block form. And thus, the need to *grate* cheese for meals like fish tacos, casseroles, etc. Guess I’ll be digging through our permanent stash of boxes stowed away at the house to locate one of our old graters.
- Speaking of cooking, I’m cooking up a quick boat project list update for the blog later this week. And keeping my fingers crossed that our next update will be the very last and final one before we set sail. Any day now. Any day.
- The sunset over Crayton’s Cover never gets old. Parking lot view and all. Look at that killer sun flare! I simply love it down at the City Dock (minus the random guy that stopped me from shooting sunset photos the other day to chat up a storm and give me his “photo tips” …I didn’t think it was worth telling him I do this for a living. 😉 And I think my sunset photo that night was pretty okay, right?).
Happy Tuesday!!!
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Bahamas and Caribbean.
…Learn more about us and our sailing and cruising adventures.
Getting back in my grove with Project Life. Week 7 was such a fun week!
Plus, Valentine’s fell on a Friday this year, even better! Although we’re not huge, ultra romantic Valentine’s type people, we definitely still like to partake in the holiday in our own (perfect-to-us) way. Which, this year, included picking up my favorite panang curry from Sushi Thai and heading down the the boat for a quiet, relaxed dinner.
This week, we also got a visit from *everyone* in Jer’s immediate family. Pretty crazy, considering they’re all a little spread out, with Jer’s youngest sister, Ashley, driving all the way from CANADA for a week+ long visit! I, of course, had to snap a few casual photos of their immediate family while everyone was here.
The rest of the week was more of the typical…aka lots of BOAT PROJECTS! How surprising. 😉
So many awesome weeks left to enjoy in 2014!!!
WEEK 7 SPREAD:
WEEK 7 LEFT SIDE:
WEEK 7 RIGHT SIDE:
*products used: lots of ali edwards brushes (duh!); a few Paislee Press photoshop files/brushes, and the Dear Lizzy Polka Dot Party pack. (I get zero kickbacks from any of these links, just fyi.)
*project life is a memory-keeping system + lifestyle. In 2014, i’m creating a digital spread for every week of the year so I can professionally print a final, bound book at the end of the year. You can view all of my project life posts here.
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing and cruise the Bahamas + Caribbean.
…Learn more about us and our sailing + cruising adventures.
Join the party and follow us on instagram!!! @kimmieyoung @lahowind
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Bahamas and Caribbean.
…Learn more about us and our sailing and cruising adventures.
Around these parts. (We clearly enjoy projects.) 😉
We have a sneaking suspicion that our dinghy motor, a 2007 Yahama 8HP 2 stroke, wasn’t used much (at all) in its previous life. Why do we think this? Well, when an engine isn’t used regularly, the carburetor can gum up (basically meaning the fuel kind of reduces and becomes gummy and dirty, clogging the holes where fuel “should” freely flow). This, subsequently can cause engine problems, big ones!
We had already done an initial first check of our engine awhile back to see if it would even remotely work, and after some tinkering, it finally did! However, we knew we still needed to do a bit more “testing” to make sure both our dinghy and outboard are in ship shape for our big cruise.
Jereme and his buddy Chris took the dinghy (along with the engine, obvi) out for another test run recently. The engine worked great at first, but died about five minutes into their test run. We clearly could tell that the engine wasn’t in proper working condition so we added this back onto our project list.
The other day, Jereme manhandled the engine off the boat and home so he and Chris could work on it from the comfort of our garage.
They got to work removing the carburetor and used a carburetor rebuild kit and carb cleaner (basically acetone) to disassemble and clean all of the key parts (which were in fact gummed up from what is likely a lack of use). They soaked some of the smaller parts in carb cleaner; sprayed the carburetor with the same cleaner product; and used compressed air to blow out any remaining “gummy” stuck-on particles (real technical description, I know).
After a thorough cleaning job, Jer and Chris put everything back together and tested out the engine (in the driveway), where it worked perfectly for a solid 20 minutes. Yay! We went ahead and checked another item off the project list, and brought the engine back down to the City Dock to secure it back aboard s/v LAHO. And this is where the story doesn’t end.
That same day, Jer and I decided to take the dinghy out for another test run. Why wouldn’t we want to test our now clean and perfectly functioning dinghy motor, right?
Things didn’t go so well.
To start, we were missing our dinghy kill switch key, but were able to borrow one from another nearby cruiser (thanks guys!). After starting up our trusty Yamaha, we tooted around the City Dock a bit, getting an up close and personal look at the dinghy dock and doing a quick run around the mooring balls. Things were going great, so we headed out into Naples Bay to “really” test things out. After a few minutes of dinghy cruising, the engine died. Out of nowhere. Seriously?! WTH?
Jereme tried and tried to get the engine restarted, but we just couldn’t seem to make it work. Typical. I thought we would just float ourselves over to a neighboring mansion’s pretty little dock and “walk” the dinghy back home, but a passerby boater saved the day and came to help tow us back to the City Dock. Yay for good samaritans! (Btw, we do actually have a Sea Tow membership and could have easily called them for help — as I’m sure they would’ve loved being called in for a dinghy tow. lol.)
So…we brought the engine home for round 2 of cleaning! Fun times.
Jereme and Chris did the same cleaning process ^^described above^^ last night, but are letting everything sit overnight this time.
Hopefully that (along with maybe some fresh gas) does the trick! We will most definitely let you know. 😉 Or we will be figuring out “Plan B” for a dinghy engine.
To be continued…
Posted in Boat Projects, Sailing BlogTags: Bahamas, Carburetor Cleaning, Caribbean, Cruising, Dinghy Motor Cleaning, LahoWind, Outboard Motor, Sailboat, Sailing Blog, Yamaha 8HP
To us.
But more commonly known to most as “ice cubes.” 😉
Yup, that’s right, we tested out our new Koldfront Ultra Compact Portable Ice Makerand it works like a charm! Hip hip hooray! Our fancy new icemaker produced about 10 bullet-shaped cubes every 8 minutes or so on our initial test run. Basically, just enough to chill one drink each round. Not bad, I suppose?
Over the years, I’ve become somewhat of an ice junkie. (Thanks a lot dad.) Like fill-a-huge-tervis-tumbler-to-the-brim-with-ice-so-nothing-else-fits-and-then-pour-in-two-drops-of-diet-coke type of girl. I also always have a drink (with ice) by my side. Soon, our lack of available ice on the boat is probably a big lifestyle adjustment for me.
But thanks to Jereme and his fabulous idea to purchase a portable ice maker, we will, at the very least, now have a way to *make* ice ourselves. Even if it’s just a few cubes at a time.
So, the other day, Jereme and I tested out our fancy new cube maker. And it was super simple! You basically just plug it in, fill it with water per the instruction manual, and let it do its thing. Easy peasy!
And voila! ICE!!!
Just a little word to the wise… the machine does NOT keep the ice frozen after it’s made (we knew this going in and witnessed it first hand on our test run). You definitely need to remove the cubes immediately or they will begin to melt right back into the original water supply that created them in the first place.
We also noticed that after the first two rounds of ice had been made, the third round of cubes came out significantly larger. The bullet shaped cubes were much thicker and more substantial than the first two rounds. Hmmm, interesting.
The koldfront machine draws 2.1 amps, which isn’t terrible since we won’t have to run it all the time. And I think for the price, it was definitely worth the investment.
Now, let’s see how long it takes for us to break it. 😉
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The Adventures of Oliver will be fun to follow! He cracks me up!! Does he ever jump off the boat into the water? That would scare me to death!