Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Mid-February blues and www.defender.com will love us this spring.

Winter is beginning to drag on. We are slated for 6-10 inches of snow today and it is just beginning to fall as I type this. Jenny and I both enjoy snow quite a bit, but it is around this time of year when I begin to enjoy it a bit less. After our recent trip to the vi's it is even more poignant of a loss to be unable to use our boat for its intended purpose of sailing.

In the meantime, we are preparing for a big (read: expensive and busy) spring. Work on our seahood that Jenny blogged about last fall came to a grinding halt when shrink wrap season and end of semester papers took over. So I'll have to resume that soon-- hopefully it will begin warming up under the shrinkwrap on nice days soon and that will help me get back to work. After that gets fiberglassed, I have some work to do on our decks with repairing some blemishes left from old thru-deck stuff that's been long removed. All this has to happen with the shrinkwrap still on, because then we plan to paint the topsides with Easypoxy, so they look new and fresh and then our seahood will match perfectly. A couple friends used this product last year and got GREAT results. I'm excited for it, but it will be a huge project. Our hull paint is still fresh with only 2 years under its belt, but once the topsides are dry and the shrinkwrap is removed we need to get hauled out for new bottom paint. Our bottom got considerably crusty last season and if we are to make any speed through the water this year we need new paint. While we are hauled out, the plan is also to install a seawater foot pump for dish washing purposes. This all adds up to lots of $$$ all too quickly. Hopefully there won't be any problems with the haul out and we can accomplish everything in a timely manner. When all that is said and done we should have a boat which finally looks right fine from all angles, top, bottom, and sideways :)

As a finishing blow to our spring bank account we are also hoping to grab a Manson Supreme anchor from www.azuremarine.com. It is a ripoff of the Rocna anchor, but for half the price it has far more holding power (second hand knowledge mind you) than most anything else. Our plan is to anchor as much as possible this summer instead of grabbing moorings. That will help justify the anchor price and will get us more comfortable with anchoring.

Oh, and we have some bad batteries that need replaced, and a we need a new mainsail, and we have some crusty looking rigging.... and our inverter needs some new wiring, and we need the mast pulled to put some lights up, and there is a leaky port... and... and... ahhh boats. :)


4 comments:

  1. Are you sure the Manson copy is worth the risk, have you seen this:
    www.petersmith.net.nz/boat-anchors/manson-supreme-anchor.php

    The "real deal" Rocna 33 lb is only $60 more from West Marine.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the info. Not to say that I'm skeptical of the article, but I did realize that it was on the designer of the new generation of rocna anchors website. That is not to say that I don't believe the article, only that we'll take that into consideration when we go to purchase our anchor.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anon - I also wanted to thank you for pointing out that West Marine (and other US stores) now have rocna's for sale! The last time we had looked for rocna's, we could only buy them internationally and the 33lb anchor was literally $900.

    Since they are available and affordable, we're definitely talking of going that route instead of the manson supreme. We'll see!

    -Jenny

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, last I saw, the Rocna was like 800 compared to a 400 dollar Manson. But it has been a couple years since I looked because I had simply disregarded the Rocna after that. Since they really have come down to a more reasonable price then yeah, we may well get Rocna. Both are nice though. We used a Manson on a friends boat for week, moving anchorages each night, and it never dragged. A Rocna will be an even better step up.

    ReplyDelete