Blogging is Hard Work/Update from Bangarang

I last posted a blog almost nine months ago. My blog about the three months Kent and I spent in the Turks & Caicos was drafted, but never completed and published. Hard to imagine that I just got busy, even though our life on Bangarang is pretty relaxing. 

 

Kent and Paula with Bangarang in the T&C

Kent sailed back to Florida with our son Ian and friend Scott...

 

Ian and Trooper taking a break

While I flew home to welcome our first grandchild, Clara Jean. Kent and I were so lucky to be able to spend a few months with her over the summer!

 

Clara Jean: what a doll

Just in the last few months, I've enjoyed a visit with college roommates...

 

Shopping for orchids with Carol and Pam

Kent and I attended the annual Sailboat Show in Annapolis with friends and visited the harbor in Baltimore...

 

In Baltimore Harbor

I spent nine days in Berlin with my friend Linnea to visit her family and friends...

 

At a fabulous local artisan market in Berlin

We with friends on their boat in San Diego to Catalina Island, where we celebrated Thanksgiving...

 

Sailing into Avalon with Kris and Tom 

But back to blogging. It's hard work and I've been busy with family, friends, and travel. But no excuses: I needed a break. 

So, I've just downloaded a new app that I think will make it easier to create and publish my blogs. We'll see. I like playing with new technology, and find myself suspiciously busy when all of a sudden the toilet won't macerate or flush, and Kent has to overhaul the head. Which, by the way, just happened! 

 

I want nothing to do with anything mechanical under the floor boards!

I'm writing this blog entry from a lovely spot in the Bahamas. See my next blog for our latest adventure!

 

Our Wallets Are Lighter But Bangarang Is Worth It

Bangarang was scheduled for maintenance at Harbortown Marina in Fort Pierce mid-January. She was hauled out there because they have a big enough lift. At 23,000 lbs empty and 25 feet wide, Bangarang requires a special lift.

Bangarang on the Travel-Lift in the boatyard

The first thing we had done was scraping and painting the bottom. Naturally, they painted it the wrong color, so we got an extra, third coat at no cost. Good to have a third coat! You should have seen the pink barnacles on our bottom after spending a couple of month's in St Augustine's harbor! 

In the boatyard with the wrong color bottom paint

The guys in the boatyard couldn't believe we got these
barnacles in Florida. They wanted to know where we'd been.

Seeing those propellers reminds me: we had two new, larger propellers installed since it was out of the water. The new ones give us much more maneuverability and they weren't too expensive. 

Trooper is inspecting the boatyard work
after installation of the new propellers.

Then our new freezer from Italy was installed. We didn't have a freezer at all before, unless you count the tiny freezer shelf in our relatively small refrigerator. We often go to islands where there are no people or grocery stores, so the ability to make ice and keep frozen food is important to our comfort on the boat. And now we have ice and no longer have to buy ice for our cooler. (We figured out that, if we bought a bag of ice every day for four years, we would have paid for our new freezer. So we need to stay on Bangarang for four years, at least, to make our investment worth it!)   

Our new freezer from Italy

A new motor was installed for our electric winch. The motor is made in Denmark. We'd sent our motor back to Denmark to be rebuilt, but it turned out that repairing it would cost more than buying a new one. Who would have thought?! So now Kent doesn't need to raise the 250 lb mainsail up by himself manually. He raises it part-way and then presses a button on the mast, and the mainsail slowly but magically raises. 

The electric winch now has a new motor and the switch
Kent uses when he raises the mainsail is located
on the mast, at upper left in  the picture. 

We had a new deck light installed too. Ours wasn't working and I need to see when we anchor in the dark. This doesn't happen very often but once in awhile, it takes longer to reach our destination than we'd planned. And it's nighttime. And there's no moon. And there are coralheads to avoid. Enough said.

Our new deck light, much bigger and brighter
than our old one, in the center of the picture

The entire outer shell of the boat was buffed and polished (which roughly cost what you'd pay to have about 100 cars washed.) But I have to admit, the buffing and polishing really made a difference. It needed it and now it's very clean and shiny.

One of the best new gadgets recently installed on Bangarang is the new wind generator, the SilentX. It generates the extra power we need to run our new freezer and everything else without worry. We have solar panels and a generator, but this wind generator is one more way of providing power. And this model is a lot quieter than the older models of the past. Naturally, the wind generator does not come with a mount for the boat; a stainless steel mount has to be custom-made and installed on the davits on the stern ($$$).  

The SilentX, our new wind generator, mounted on the
davits on our stern (out of the way so it doesn't decapitate anyone)

The new panel on our navigation table that controls the SilentX 

While we were inspecting the work in the boatyard, we realized how worn our sunscreens over the windows on the salon were. So what's a couple more "boat bucks?" Our new sunscreens look great.

New sunscreens

And I got some new outdoor pillows to throw around. Instead of going the marine/Sunbrella route ($$$), I bought some pillows at Target in Vero Beach ($). Pretty happy about that!

Comfy pillows for cheap

Overall, the boat sparkles and our wallets are empty. 

While all this work is being done, the boatyard does not allow us to live aboard. Nor would we want to. The boatyard is dusty, there is no electrical/water hookup, and a team of workers are coming and going in and out of your boat all week. Or in our case, almost two weeks. So Kent and I are blessed to have friends (two couples, actually) nearby who hosted us at their condos/guest houses while the work was done. For this we are tremendously grateful. The accommodations were lovely,  the company excellent, and we saved the huge expense of hotel. Thank you friends--Gary, Caron, Pete and Laurel! 

Here are some more pictures of Bangarang in the boatyard, all spiffed up up and with the correct color bottom paint.

So our journey continues and our plan is to cross to the Bahamas with the ultimate goal of reaching the Turks and Caicos Islands by March 1. More on that in the next blog!