It all began on a nice Monday night romantic sail from Sausalito over to Berkeley Marine Center haul out slip. The girls went with the Kiddoo Grandparents and Taj was asleep in the aft cabin.  I think this was the first time in too long that Christian and I actually sailed together, sans kids. We took 2.5 hours under full sail from anchorage to dock. The wind was perfect, but we were fighting a pretty strong ebb, so our average speed was 3.8 kts.

First thing on Tuesday morning the Berkeley Marine Center crew hauled us out. As soon as the boat was positioned on it’s stands, Taj and I took off for the day and Christian went to work. He finished sanding before noon and the first coat of bottom paint was on by 3pm.

        

Wednesday included another coat of paint and the engine/propeller coupling removal to make some needed adjustments. We also put in another thru-hole for the water maker.

Thursday: another coat of paint, filing of the coupling for a slightly looser fit,  shaft removal and replacement to get the previous summer’s caught trip line fully removed, the drip-less stuffing box removed and replaced with traditional packing gland. We also installed a “tranny saver”, said a few words that shall not be repeated, and realigned the engine.

                

                          

Friday: We were the first to splash for the day! After we came off of the stands and in to the slings, a few coats of paint were added on the areas where the pads were, a few moments to dry, and voilà, splishy splashy in 3 days! Captain Lauducci is AMAZING!!!

                                     

As soon as we hit water, all possible leak points were checked and all was good to go. Well, we thought all was good to go. After some fine tune engine alignments, we started the engine. To our disappointment the area around the new packing gland was getting too hot. Urg!!! … many other words….

After 2 days of wrenching on the engine at the guest dock in Berkeley Marina, Christian figured it out, phew! We were worried we would have to haul back out and go back to the drip-less system (which we really did my want on there). The culprit of the hot spot around the packing gland: aligning the engine and shaft on the hard. When the boat was returned to the water, the haul settled, therefore changing the position of the alignment by a whole half of an inch!!!  Having the alignment off that much caused way to much friction around the packing gland. Moral of the story; wait till your boat is back in the water to do your engine alignment.  Now I think it’s safe to say that we are pretty much good to go!

To Do:
We are just waiting on floating ground cable for our SSB (single side band) radio to finish installing out SSB. We need to finish connecting the water maker and start it up.  And we are also going to get the iridiumGo before we take off. Yay!