Hatches and Ports

We are sad to say that we have not had much quality time to work on the new boat. Blame it on my pregnancy, blame it on lack of money, blame it on the cold...but we just haven't been making as much forward progress as we had initially hoped. Such is life.

Finally, we decided to take a road trip down to Rhode Island to visit the previous owners, and to purchase some of the extras that they have for the boat. We decided it was time to buy the hatches and ports!

We keep going back and forth - do we paint and then put hatches (and ports) in, or vice versa? There are reasons for each way. Painting first makes more sense, but the boat is outside and covered with a sketchy shrinkwrap system. Lack of hatches in that condition is just asking for an accidentally wet interior. However, Justin thinks he can make the shrinkwrap last long enough to get the decks painted and then put the hatches in as soon as possible after that. We just hope the weather and the baby cooperate and that paint can happen sooner than later.

We had a very nice visit with Henry and Birgitta and packed all the hatches into the car. The Bomar hatches were purchased brand new ~30 years ago, and they still had the paper over the lexan to protect them from scratches! We wanted to see what they looked like underneath, so we picked away at the corner of the paper and tried to peel it, and...the paper was stuck. I mean really, really stuck.

We knew that you have to be careful with lexan, as it scratches very easily. We tried to just pick away at the paper with a fingernail until it came off, but we would have been doing that for a month! Also, when we did get the paper to come off, it left a terrible gluey residue on the glass. We were actually quite worried that this layer was basically baked right into the glass, and that these ''brand new'' hatches were going to look terrible when we were done.

Well, finally we found that some soap, hot water, and elbow grease really got the stuff to come off of the glass, including the residue. It all came off in layers - first the paper, then the glue, then the residue. We spent quite a few hours working on them together, but it was nice to sit down and work on a boat project together, to make good progress, and to see some beautiful hatches underneath it all.

Heating up the soapy water.

Peeling away at the gubbus.

Beautiful!

On the Hard.

It has been too long since Madrigal has been bottom painted. In fact, I've never seen her bottom until today....Justin has from under the water.

Anyhow, now we're on the hard for a few days!

Slightly scary.

You'd think we had black paint on the bottom. It's actually bright blue.

gubbus.

Our Move to Thayers Landing

Well, we did it. We moved our boat and our lives to Weymouth Massachusetts. It was a strangely happy and sad farewell all at once. Not like we are 1000 miles away or anything, but it is still a weird feeling to have left all our friends and our daily routines. We had a great trip over here. At one point our friend Mike, who lives on an oversized speedboat, came racing out with a small crew of our friends to do circles around us as we luffed in a squirrelly breeze. It was a fun, and it made for a nice goodbye gesture. But with no further adieu, here is our boat snuggled away at its new dock.

Madrigal at Thayer's Landing

So far it has been a very pleasant experience and I think we'll be very happy spending the summer here. It is so completely different from Constitution Marina. First off, it is quiet. So pleasantly quiet. A train goes by once every 1/2 hour or so at most, but even that sound is muted and minimal compared to the constant traffic over the Charles river bridge that we are used to. Also, I don't think I've heard an emergency siren once! Nice. Aside from quiet, it is very green looking and pleasant smelling. That's surely a change. Jeff's backyard is full of lilacs that smell way better than exhaust.

I took this picture just to show how amazed I was to see real living

trees and greenery outside our ports :)

After we settled in we both crashed out pretty quickly. It had been a long couple days preparing and then the 4 hour sail over added to our tiredness. But of course, we weren't so tired that we couldn't make some homemade pizza for dinner :)

Jenny making pizza dough.

Then came Sunday. It was a beautiful 85 degree day, and we were both free to explore our new surroundings. Sunday included a dinghy ride up the river and across to a park, a bike ride into town, and a walk to other nearby parks for Willie.

This is looking down the Fore River. The ocean is a few bends past those powerlines.

Speaking of those powerlines, the trip up the river was quite hair raising the first time. We have to go under the Fore River bridge (7 feet of clearance for us at high tide) and then under 3 sets of powerlines (about 15 feet of clearance at high tide). The visual perspective staring up the mast as you go under these things is all skewed. It looks like you are surely going to run straight into one of them. Of course, we cleared everything fine, but then there is the narrow channel to follow with very shallow water on either side. It was a bit tense, but really it went just fine.

A channel marker near our dock with some geese. (lots of geese here)

We seem to get the occasional swans as well.

Our dinghy ride to the park across the river (a 30 second dinghy ride-- I could probably push off the dock and coast all the way over) yielded some neat finds. There is moped quite similar to my Kreidler which is submerged in the lowtide muck. Perhaps some vintage Puch or maybe even a fellow Kreidler?

Moped in the gubbus.

A closeup of the moped in the gubbus.

The floodplain area of the park has some really neat swirled grass kind of stuff. It is strange and cushy to walk on. Willie really had fun running around in it.

Willie in the grass across the river.

We also discovered that this river we are in is technically a Marine Estuary with a really neat little segment of marine life in it. This placard below is posted in that same Park. If you click the picture it will give you a large version that you can read. Neat.

Estuary placard.

I don't think Willie's nose has stopped sniffing since we got here.

And this was from our dinghy ride up the river. That was about as far as

we could go before shallow water and a little dam stopped us.

So all told, we are pretty happy with things. It is going to take a while to get used to not being able to just be like "I wonder what Mark is up to?" and walking over to his boat to find out. And there was almost always a crowd of 3 or 4 already over there playing games and having drinks. Instead, it's just us. But I like it. It is more peaceful, more subtle, and more how I always pictured living on a boat with a beautiful wife and a sniffing dog.

Our Last Day at Constitution Marina

Our last days at Constitution Marina were productive, fun, and (quoting Justin) pre-nostalgic. We really couldn't have had a better last day at the marina, as the weather was amazing, the grills were out, and we were able to gather with many good friends and enjoy everything about the marina that we have loved so much.

Early in the day, Justin borrowed a wetsuit and dove under Madrigal to clean off the prop and shaft, as we have been experiencing some slow motoring due to....gubbus. No, that's not the technical term, but it about sums up what was floating in the water after he was finished! Now our boat motors as it should, but we still need to get hauled out soon and get the rest of that crap off the bottom and paint it up. Soon, so soon. Everything costs so much money though, so it's never an easy thing to do.



The rest of the day, we spent the day cleaning, doing laundry, taking our last *real* showers (it's boat showers from here on out!) and packing things up in the boat (bikes, hoses, etc.) Once we were all finished with that, we went up to the grocery store and bought hot dogs, hot links, chicken, asparagus, corn, etc. for the grills.

It was great seeing everyone up at the grills again and the night was pristine and the weather was warm. Boats were going in and out of slips after dark and it was great to see the marina alive again. The food was fabulous and company couldn't have been more perfect. It was a night that will not soon be forgotten. We're both going to miss everyone so much, but we're looking forward to our new adventure and really hope that we'll be able to see everyone a lot over the summer, despite our new marina.

We sailed into Thayer's Landing yesterday and all went well. Tomorrow I'll post some photos and a little write up of how everything went!