Oil!

Along with the winter season shrinkwrapping tasks comes the task of winterizing the engine.

Last year, I didn't bother with it. Our engine is under the port settee (as seen in one of the pics below) and it stays plenty warm there since we have to heat the boat for us and the pets all winter anyhow. Winterizing really just helps things not freeze when you will be away from the boat, but we are never gone for long enough to care. We just leave a small heater on and have a friend watch in case the power goes out.

However, our engine is seawater cooled and winterizing has the added bonus of clearing the corrosive seawater out and replacing it with fairly neutral engine coolant for 4 or 5 months. That little bonus makes winterizing worth it to me, so today I changed the oil (done every spring and fall), flushed the system with coolant, put some sta-bil in the fuel tanks, and put some preservation gunk in the spark plug holes (is there a better name for those? I'm sure there is)

In this picture you can also see the 120 amp alternator we put on this fall. Our old 40 amp motorola was dead and even when it was alive it could barely put any juice into our battery bank, so I replaced it with this monster. Works great, and it's so clean and shiny! Made specifically to fit the Atomic 4 :)

Willie is never quite sure what to think when the cover is off of the engine.

Nice days in the fall.

So far, this autumn has been a very mild one. It is kind of sad that we can't go out sailing due to shrink wrap being on the boat, but we can still make good use of the weather. I made a temporary rig to hold up a cockpit table that we got for free as scrap from a fellow boater who installed a new one. I'll put the table in the right way in the spring, but for under the shrinkwrap it makes a great place to sit and enjoy some hot coffee. Around 40-50 degrees outside it is 60 something under the wrap. Perfect :) Just like summer....

Constitution Marina Pool Parties

The most frequently asked questions by far from dirt dwellers revolve around one thing - the winter. With the cold and snow fast approaching, I thought I'd take a moment to let people know how the liveaboards at Constitution Marina beat the winter blues.

On any given day in the winter, the marina may look like this:
Or it may look like this:


Boston winters are very random, and you never know what the weather will be like. In any case, this is generally what the liveaboards look like on any given Friday in the winter months:





And really, I'd show more pictures of the pool party itself, but this is as clear as they come:


We can't thank Constitution Marina enough for hosting these parties for us every week. Some are not as...insane...as this one, because they don't always provide the free food and drinks, but the fact that they are willing to heat that pool up to hot tub temperature and the fact that they stay after hours to let us goof off and melt the stress of work and winter away is just one of the many reasons we're able to make it through winter alive.