Category: Boat Maintenance

Kairos Gets Some New Bling: Replacing Our Rigging in Martinique

An Unexpected Trip to Martinique

We had previously decided that Dominica (blog post to come soon) would be the farthest south we would venture this year. We’re planning to sail back to the States before hurricane season and we’re looking forward to spending some more time in the Bahamas with its plethora of white sandy beaches, mahi mahi, and lobster. However, we’ve already learned how quickly plans can change while cruising. It seems like mother nature and boat maintenance are constantly creating obstacles and we’re no longer surprised by delays. But we never would have predicted the events that occurred on the morning of Friday, January 13th that caused us to make an unexpected trip to Martinique. read more

Hauling Out is Hard to Do

Our first sailing season has ended and Kairos is sleeping safely on land in the Puerto Del Rey boat yard. She’ll get some much needed rest here and some TLC over the next four months before she splashes back into the water in early November. I was dreading haul out day. The amount of work required to prep a boat for storage can be overwhelming. I knew it would be hard work and I was right. However, with a little up front planning and organization, the process can be smoothly executed. read more

Where There is Yin, There is Also Yang: Conception Island and Clarence Town

Where there is Yin, there is Yang. Where there is good, there is bad. Chinese philosophy believes that these contrary forces are actually complementary and interconnected; that they give rise to each other. This is probably true for most things in life, but it is especially true for sailing. For each wonderful day we get to lounge on a pristine white sandy beach, we also have days of frustrating boat maintenance that make us want to throw in the towel. Our first two legs after Georgetown are a perfect example of the boat life Yin and Yang. read more

Great Exuma

Being at anchor on a sailboat is pretty amazing. Your boat is always facing into the wind, so there’s a nice cool breeze running through. Bugs like land, so I don’t have to worry about any more noseeum attacks. And the views are usually spectacular. My favorite moment is after we’ve eaten dinner in our cockpit and we are watching the sun set with cocktails in our hands. Life on the hook can be pretty magical. But there are some pretty nice things about staying in a marina: hot showers, laundry access, free internet, unlimited water, no long and wet dinghy rides to shore to walk the pups, and better protection from strong winds. When we pulled into the Emerald Bay Marina, we figured we’d stay a few nights…we had no idea we’d be staying eight! read more

There is No Such Thing As a Free Lunch

Just 4 short months ago when I was working for an engineering firm, I would attend “lunch and learns” one or two times a week. A company sales rep would bring in lunch and present their products to us engineers. Engineers are like college students and love “free” food, so we’d come out by the dozens to attend these “lunch and learns”. But the lunch wasn’t free. In exchange for lunch, we gave up an hour of our day to learn about the company’s products and potentially specify them on the projects we were working on. read more

A Delayed Start

Our lease at the marina ended on Wednesday, Feb 10th. We decided that this would be our departure date. On Monday, Rob pulled me up the mast to replace a lower shroud that was damaged. The only chore we had left to complete before we could set sail was replacing the alternator, which we received in the mail Tuesday morning. We thought replacing the alternator would be an hour long job, then we could relax and enjoy our last day at the Regatta Pointe Marina.  Little did we know, Kairos had different plans for us. read more

10 Lessons Learned from Life Aboard

We have been living aboard for 10 days now. I can’t believe it’s actually been that long. The time is flying by. We’ve learned a lot of things since moving on board. For example we just learned how to take apart and clean a carburetor. We also recently learned which way the valve handle should be pointed to ensure we are pumping the toilet to the holding tank instead of overboard (oops– fortunately we haven’t really used it yet). But in addition to learning about our boat’s systems, we have also learned (or relearned in many causes) some valuable life lessons. Here are our 10 lessons learned from 10 days of living aboard. read more

A New Year, A New Home

Happy New Year everyone! We are officially liveaboards! We said goodbye to our very colorful beach apartment on Friday and moved all of our belongings on board Kairos. This was by far our most pleasant moving experience to date. It’s not such a dreadful and daunting task when everything you own fits in your car. Once on board we spent the remainder of the day organizing and developing storage solutions. We were both pleasantly surprised with how much we were able to bring on board. We still have some unused storage on the boat, which I plan to fill with new shoes and bathing suits (just kidding…kinda’). read more

And the New Name is…

When we adopted Jaela last year we decided right away that we would rename her. “Jaela” wasn’t as bad as Baxter’s pound name, “Coco Puff”, but we could come up with something better. After two days of reviewing dog (and people) name lists, we decided to stick with Jaela after all. It was just easier. read more

One Step Forward…Two Steps Back

Well, we’ve had our boat for a week now and we’ve already learned that owning a sailboat is HARDWORK. We’ve been working very long days. The good news is that we are becoming very familiar with our boat’s systems. The bad news is that every time we fix something, we discover two more things that require maintenance in the process. We were testing the hot water heater, when our fresh water pump failed. We cleaned out the anchor chain locker only to find that the windlass and raw water wash down pump weren’t working. Thus, our to-do list is growing faster than we can cross items off. read more

Who Has 4 Thumbs and Owns a Boat???

These Guys!!!
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It’s official. We bought a Pearson 39-2 sailboat. We plan to move onto this lovely lady in the Regatta Pointe Marina after the New Year. Until then, we will be dwindling down (and of course adding to) our to-do list. We are looking forward to taking her on some shakedown sails this weekend when Rob’s dad is in town to help. read more

Goodbye House

Okay, so that blizzard I wrote about in the last post WAS a joke. We didn’t get the 12 inches that was predicted…heck…I don’t think we got more than an inch. But it’s the last snow the dogs will see for awhile, so we went to the park to play. read more