November 20th, 2022
A week before we planned to sail to Mexico, due to the lack of affordable dockage in California, we found a place to tie up in San Diego for the remainder of the year. I was mentally prepared, I thought, to live in Ensenada, Mexico for a few months. Looking back, I couldn’t imagine that going well! In order to get parts, I would have to pay for someone to get them from San Diego and bring them back or go back and forth across the border myself. So much added time, effort and expense would have quickly made our cheap dockage much less attractive.
So, we’ve been in San Diego for a few weeks now. The weeks have flown by faster than I can really explain. It feels like I’ll start the day off early on a Monday morning, go down to the engine room to mess with this project or that, I’ll come up for lunch and it’s Friday night. Every moment of the day is spoken for. I’m running on an energy that is purely the result of excitement and determination. For now, it’s working, but I know that in order to finish all that we need to by the end of the year, I’ll have to work at least 10hrs a day, 7 days a week, for the rest of this year.
In the past couple of weeks, we have removed a few hundred pounds of unused wires and old equipment. We have installed all new navigation electronics, which required us to rebuild our helm station and our navigation station. We have begun some brightwork. We’ve begun to address our leaking freshwater tanks. We’ve taken apart our windlass so that we can convert it to hydraulic. We’ve done a lot more than all of this, and our “to do” list is still growing.
Here’s a short (not comprehensive) list of what we need to accomplish by the end of the year:
- Repair leaking port freshwater tank. Remove old plumbing and plumb into system
- Repair leaking starboard freshwater tank (both tanks require disassembling rooms, floors and walls)
- Uninstall 12kw generator in lazarette and cap all wires and plumbing
- Install 5kw generator in engine room, plumb and wire
- Install 2nd inverter in engine room to current system
- Run hydraulic lines from engine room under galley and fwd room to windlass
- Install hydraulic systems in engine room and on deck
- Install new hydraulic motor on windlass (just shipped the old one off yesterday to help with fabrication of new)
- Redo all running rigging (really, everything needs to be replaced)
- Install new sails and get canvas cover for mizzen measured and made before end of year (sails get in late December…yes, it will take a bit of a miracle).
- Change main engine oil
- Repair or replace water maker (we really want to go with a simpler, less power hungry system)
- Repair deck bungs
- Varnish all exterior woodwork (needs to happen before we leave)
- Varnish all interior woodwork and paint where needed (don’t know how it will happen before we leave)
- Re-install hydraulic ram and pump (I removed it last week to get seals and valves repaired)
- Run new VHF cables on both main and mizzen masts (for VHF radio and AIS)
- Install new cabinetry hardware so drawers don’t slide out underway.
- Replace cracked polycarbonate glass as needed (likely won’t happen this time)
- Troubleshoot engine room blowers and repair
- Weld / patch exhaust elbow
- Repair main engine fuel valve leak
- Clean fuel in port tank
- Clean up remaining wiring and other systems
- Repair portlight seals and hardware
- And continue organizational development needs in between projects
As I write, it’s just Kiera and I aboard Resilience, but after Thanksgiving I will be solo through to the end of the year. I’m going to do my best to just stick to the work with my eye on January, when we will finally be sailing again! In early January we’ll head South for Mexico. We are currently working on plans to collaborate with American and Mexican cetacean scientists to study killer whale populations for two weeks while in Mexico. We hope to have another group of cetacean specialists aboard after that. We will work with individuals and organizations ashore while we’re not conducting research. In February we will head to Costa Rica and Panama. In mid-March we will transit the Panama Canal and in Early April we will sail for the East coast of the United States!
“Busy” doesn’t quite describe our schedule. Slammed might be more telling. We’re just trying to build momentum for this endeavor. We are planning more boat work in April and May of 2022. We can’t wait to be back on the East coast for a season. Home sweet home…
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Thank you so much for your support!
Happy Thanksgiving,
Tripp
Apparent Winds 