3/3/2016

Repairs to Toodle-oo! have been continuing – as evidenced by new invoices arriving on a weekly basis!

All the electronics appear to be in place, wired up beautifully. The electrical gear – chargers, inverters, and various controllers are also installed. A new wind generator is in place, along with new fancy control and monitoring system.

The Propeller and propshaft were removed and found to be OK – reinstallation turned out a little tricky – they couldn’t get the coupling to line up right so had to remove it – but in order to remove it meant taking the gearbox off – but to do that they needed to lift the engine off its mountings! Neat thing is, I got to replace the engine mountings as a consequence! All is back together now…

The windlass took quite a hit and was sent off to Lighthouse to be refurbished – it came back looking virtually new!

The mast has been painted and we took the opportunity to replace the mainsail ‘Strongtrack’ system and the mast boot (which seals the hole between the boat’s deck and the mast itself – hopefully no leaks…). New mast lights are being put on and the whole mast re-wired. Next week the mast will be dressed with its new standing rigging and furlers, ready for re-stepping.

The sails have been repairs – and washed – though we understand that some of the burn marks were not removable.

While this has all been going on we have serviced all the winches and through hull seacocks, I’ve started fixing up the generator (taking all sorts of old impeller bits out of the heat exchanger!)  and back home we’ve been working on a new inventorying system as well as doing some sewing: New anchor drogue, a massive patch to cover the hull in case we get holed somehow, new lee cloth for the port side and various hold-down straps and jacklines. Laurie has also started to re-varnish the floors…

What next? Launch! Ian Mackechnie at New England Boatworks has been coordinating all this activity and has decided he wants to launch Toodle-oo! in the next couple of weeks! So there’ll be some mad activity for the next few days with bottom paint, polishing, and general finishing of the project to make that happen – followed by further evaluation of systems that can only be done in the water – both electrical and electronics related… Will be nice to have her in and with any luck take advantage of some of the early Spring good weather days to test her out.

We’ve also been working on our future cruising plans – all very exciting and I’ll fill in some detail in the next week or two…