I'm floored...

Picture post to come from the United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis -- I went with Greg and had a fabulous time. I looked all over for ranges, but I didn't see a single one.

What I did find was flooring.

Ladies and gentlemen, the beautiful Burmese teak interior of my boat is marred by a rotting faux teak and holly floor. It's.. well it's disgusting.

Sometimes when I step on said floor if I've spilled water or it's been raining and I've left a hatch open (yes, OK, I have occasional bouts of stupidity.)

I tripped last week and popped up a piece of said faux nightmare flooring and discovered that the subfloor is quite wet and nasty.

Fabulous.

Now, I will say that my father and I agree that teak and holly flooring looks like it belongs in a bowling alley. You can see mine below the table (a bad laminate-covered disaster):

You can also see in the photo below the aluminum outline around a hatch cover. Um, ew. (Sorry for the poor picture, I couldn't find a recent one).

Now that up there is what I want... lovely hatches inlaid with wood. Pretty teak and holly that isn't rotting.

But you'll never believe what the above photo is. It's Lonseal. Yes. Faux teak and holly. You may be stunned. It's not a real surprise that faux flooring looks better now than it did in 1983 when Misty was built. It's also antimicrobial. And you know I am totally down to the ground with anything antimicrobial on Misty. That girl is a mold factory.

Anyway, I ordered some Lonseal samples to check out. I was super impressed with their product at the boat show. My dad is working on ordering marine plywood we can use to re-do the sub-flooring and is investigating a way to inlay my hatches so that they don't stick up several millimeters from the floor. We need about two sheets of the plywood (which is more dense than regular plywood), some Lonseal (which needs to be ordered from Defender after we pick a color), something to seal the side of the sub-floor that touches the bilge. I also want to re-paint the bilge while I'm down there. Why not, right?

I'll let you know when I get the samples, but I'm pretty excited at the prospect of a new floor and I hope to get one in before winter. Cross your fingers!

Anticipating the unexpected...

So it looks like Baltimore is going to be hit by Hurricane Irene this weekend. Weather reports are still sketchy, but at the very least we will get some high winds and rain, according to the weathermen.

I don't claim to be an expert on hurricane preparedness on boats, but when I lived in Washington, D.C., I was required to file a hurricane plan (including location of extra lines and fenders) which is what initially got me thinking about and researching hurricane preparedness. That and Ida, which hit the first year I lived aboard.

Here in the Chesapeake Bay we don't frequently see the effects of hurricanes beyond what's expected for this weekend: high winds, some possible flooding, high tides and lots and lots of rain.

Rain and high water aren't so much a problem for me since I am docked at a floating dock. The dock will just rise as the water rises. And so will Misty Rose. The problem comes with the high winds. High winds cause large waves, which if your boat is not tied up properly can cause serious problems -- like hull damage.

Tidewater, which is where I live, posted on their Facebook page today that they recommend boat owners consider taking their sails off and removing canvas coverings.

Unless the forecast gets a whole lot more serious, I won't be removing my sails. They are a lot of work to get off and get folded and I don't really want to have to do that. So without further ado, here is my list of hurricane preparations:

1. Make sure genoa is tightly rolled to the roller furler and tied down. 
2. Double bow line (mine has a tendency to rub in the chock and wear down).
3. Check all dock lines. Add extra lines where necessary.
4. Rehang all fenders so that they will stay between the boat and the dock.
5. Pump bilge (yes -- I am still pumping the bilge by hand!)
6. Dog down all hatches (it only takes one hatch partially open to cause a flood -- trust me, I've been there!)

And of course my final step -- head for the hills! When Ida hit I was incredibly seasick. I don't particularly have a mind to do that again, so I'll be heading over to the boyfriend's. Normally we split our weekends between his house and the boat, but this weekend we're definitely planning to hang out at his place!

SOURCE: Graphic from weather.com.

We're (not) gonna need a bigger boat (yet)...

So my dad has been dreaming a lot lately about a new boat, apparently. I got an e-mail Friday with the subject heading, "Wanna Catalina?"

... Particularly nice one. And six feet nine inches headroom in the cabin. http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/18334

I figure Misty plus a 65,000 loan with a 600 pmt at 5.75% would pay off in 13 years. With 700 pmt, 10.5 years. With 1000 pmt, 6.75 yrs.

As long as you live on it, even if only on weekends, the interest is tax deductible, so at 700 a month, uh, 3612 is tax ded. If your tax rate is 15% The first year pmts total 8400 but take 542 off that for the tax saving and the first year acquisition cost is less than 8000.

Lots cheaper than a house, and LOTS cheaper than a mortgage.

Now where can we find the 700/month.

Maybe not yet, but someday. There are always deals like this boat somewhere. In this one we could sail to the islands.

- dad –

And two days later

(with names changed to protect the innocent)

...

…and wouldn’t it be fun bringing it down from Massachusetts? (I’m not nuts: we’d take the canal and skip going around Cape Cod to seeward.

It’s probably got a shower inside as well as the one in the cockpit. Most boats with radar do, I think.

I could get the old crew together. I’m sure blank and blank would go, and we could fill out with blank and one or two others. Five or six would be perfect. You’d be Skipper and Second Cook. Wow. I can’t wait.

(Misty + 15 years of $352 pmts.) $20,444.76 in tax deductions on top of all the good living and great cruising.

There will always be a deal like this around. This one looks good.

I’d like 36 feet rather than 34. Think coastal! Think Hilton Head, the Outer Banks, Block Island, and Florida. The Gulf! – Tampico! Vera Cruz! Campeche! Cancun! (well, we could skip Cancun, its touristy) I know! Playa del Carmen and a hike into Yucatan! Then back. If the weather gets schnooker, we go up the ICW to Coinjock, out into the Sounds, across the Noble Neuse, and on to Norfolk

If we got adventurous, put Havana after Playa del Carmen! Then Miami and up the ICW to Charleston or Jacksonville, counting alligators all the way, and go on to Savannah in the ditch or sail. Next Myrtle Beach. Wilmington, Norfolk, and up the Bay.

‘Course we could just go to Hilton Head or the OB and back. Then next to Block Island or Maine. Mom would fly there and we’d all go to LL Bean.

Me, I’ve always wanted to transit the Panama canal. Baha! San Diego! Santa Barbara! Monterey and Carmel! San Jose, and through the Golden Gate! Seattle? Vancouver? Ketchican (sp?)? the North Pole? Baffin Bay? (not sure you can do that from the NP) Across the Great Lakes to the Erie Canal? And on home. We just circumnavigated the United States!

‘Course we could be satisfied with the Delmarva peninsula.

My response:

I have no desire to make any more payments until A) I get better pay or B) I pay off my car.

He's starting to scare me, readers. All this talk of bigger boats and loans is making me nervous. It's 35 degrees outside and I think I'm sweating...

Winter's quiet night...

There's something I love about the marina at night in the wintertime. There's no one around -- no one I can see anyway. If anyone is here, they're hiding inside their boats, snug against the early winter breeze that takes your breath away. It's still and silent save the usual evening sounds.

There's the bell-like ringing of lines. The rhythmic thumping of halyards and the hollow echo of masts. The gurgle of water slapping the sides of the boats, the groan of compressed fenders and the ever-so quiet noise of lines stretching against their cleats. The quiet humming of rigging in the wind is louder than the traffic of the city half a mile away.

Then there's the noise of a working port. The occasional whistle of a tug or blast of a ship's horn as she prepares to leave port. That's the comforting promise that everything is running as it should, ticking away reliably in the background, bringing salt for the snowstorms, bananas and cars and potash and a million other things.

Of course there's also the long, almost harmonious, purr of rail cars blowing horns as they carry goods away from Baltimore. It is quiet and it's nice.

There's something quiet and comforting about the marina at night -- but it's most comforting from the warm, comfortable inside of a boat that has weathered more winters in her life than I...

Tying up...

To preface this post, I would like to state that I am not a self-righteous boater. I don't care if you sail with your fenders in the water. It doesn't bother me if you don't trim your sails exactly right. I think sailing is a learning process. You should be able to make mistakes and learn from them with impunity. I know I make boating mistakes all the time -- and I think everyone else should have the same latitude.

That said, there are some things that are plainly unsafe for your boat that, given any basic sailing instruction, you should know not to do.

As you may or may not have gathered from my Wordless Wednesday post, there was a horrific storm Tuesday night, extending into Wednesday morning. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that I think it was the worst storm I have ever weathered aboard Misty Rose. I didn't sleep more than 45 minutes all night -- even after I took Dramamine. To put the storm in perspective, one of the guys who works in the boatyard expressed surprise that I didn't go and sit in the bathhouse or sleep in my car to get out of the storm. We're talking 35 mph winds with gusts and flash flooding, here.

Now that we've set the stage, let's talk about the reason for this post: the proper way to tie your boat to a floating dock.

I have noticed that a startling number of boats are tied up in the marina like this:


This disturbs me, readers, as it should you. Things wrong with that illustration: There are no fenders to keep the boat from banging into the dock. There is no spring line. All of the lines are tied so tightly that there is absolutely no slack in them at all.

But why is this wrong?

Well. Let me tell you about laying in bed around 4:30 a.m. and hearing an incredibly loud flapping noise. I was out of bed faster than you can say, "Jack Robinson." I thought my roller furler had come undone and my sail was flapping away. I flung open the hatch and discovered that the noise was coming not from my boat, but a boat across the dock from mine.

I was fuzzy from not sleeping all night. Should I do something? Their sail was already starting to rip. Confused, I texted my father, knowing he'd be up at 5 a.m. Five minutes later, he called, frantic that something was wrong. I explained what was happening.

His response?

"Well, if it was Misty, wouldn't you want whoever saw it to at least try?"

Of course I would.

I pulled on my trusty faux Uggs over my PJ pants and got on my pink Henri Lloyd jacket and an old hat of my dad's I'd found on the boat. I grabbed the sturdiest winch handle I could find and a length of line and set out across the dock.

I was soaked through in seconds. The other boat, tied up like the bad example picture, was bucking violently against the dock. I was a little scared to step aboard in the storm with no lifejacket, but I decided to go for it. The jib sheets must have come undone and wrapped themselves about midway up the sail so that the sail was in a figure eight. I uncleated the furling line and winched it in as tight as it would go, wrapping up the bottom of the sail. Now for the top. I cleated the furling line and uncoiled my line to try and at least tie down the maniacally flogging sail. Unfortunately, the boat was slamming the dock so hard I was afraid to go forward of the mast where there was nothing to hold onto. In the wind, I couldn't do anything for the sail.

Well, I reasoned, the marina staff would be in at 7 a.m. They'd have a solution. I got back into the boat, stripped off my soaked clothing and put on the night's second pair of pajamas.

I heard the guys outside around 7 a.m. retying boats and trying to get the shredded sail tied up. They also failed, but they did tie the boat up properly and they found some fenders.

This leads me to this post.

Things to think about when tying up your boat:
1. Buy good-quality nylon docklines.
2. Buy fenders. Put them between the boat and the dock.
3. Use your boat's cleats. If you don't have cleats, use the toe rail. It's not a good idea to tie up using the stanchions or the shrouds. Too much stress on either of these is not good (i.e. if your shrouds break or the line rubs the cotter pin out, your mast could fall or you could break a stanchion.)

Now. When I tie up my boat, I try to take any stress off the bow line because I can hear it rubbing in the chock and it keeps me awake. That in mind, the first picture I posted is my ideal way to tie up to a floating dock at a t-head (which is how my boat is docked). For the record, you should almost always tie your sailboat up so that the fattest part of the boat, also known as the beam, is the only thing touching the dock. You then put a fender there between the boat and the dock. Voila! No slamming.

It is just a bad idea to tie up any boat with only a bow line and a stern line. I have horrific nightmares about my lines breaking after the time I discovered my bow line worn through to a single fiber. To avoid this, I use a bow line, a stern line, a forward spring and an aft spring. I do not have two bow lines like that picture shows because I don't have a cleat close enough. In an ideal world, I would have that second bow line.

For Misty Rose, I like a bow line with lots of slack, a tight stern line, a tight aft spring and a little bit of slack in the forward spring.

I put fenders anywhere the boat might hit the dock if a wave were to make the boat fishtail.

Above all else, lines should be checked regularly for wear. My lines tend to wear most at the chock on the bowline, so I use a short piece of old garden hose to insulate the line in the chock.

And now you know how to tie up your boat to best keep her steady -- whether it's going to storm or not.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving...

I feel like I've been complaining a lot recently. It's cold. There's no range yet. I need X, Y and Z. I don't know how to dooooo thissssss...

Yep.

I've been a whiner.

I'm not sure if it's the cold or if I'm just scared for winter aboard. Winter on the boat can be a little bit miserable sometimes, as I have detailed in earlier posts.

So instead of complaining and being bratty, I'm going to list the 10 things I'm most thankful for on the boat:

1. My West Marine space heater. This thing works like a champ, I tell you.

2. My tea kettle. I drink more hot drinks in a day than most eight-person families drink in a week.

3. Internet access.

4. A marina with nice bathrooms and kind staff.

5. Really nice warm clothing and blankets. (I'm betting that most girls graduating master's programs don't get long underwear and hiking socks as graduation presents, but I did -- thanks Mom and Dad!)

6. A great set of advisers on all things nautical who will take my phone calls and answer the most ridiculous questions (Wait, you connect that to WHAT?!?)

7. A dock box! The marina installed my dock box and now the boat is much more clutter-free.

8. A refrigerator that keeps my food cold and doesn't fill my bilge with water like my ice box did.

9. Thick rubber gloves. If you battled as much mold and icky bilge nastiness as I did, you'd be thankful for them, too.

Annnnnnddd....

10. I own half of a freaking BOAT. Who wouldn't be thankful for that?

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, readers!

Ahhh, the smell of 2 a.m. in the rain...

Last night was just one of those nights.

It rained all day yesterday. ALL. DAY. I applied for jobs. I thought wishful thoughts about running. I drank 16 cups of tea.

Finally, I deemed it was time to stop "working" for the day, after having complained, over gchat, MSN Messenger and Facebook chat to at least 47 of my friends that I was going stir crazy. STIR CRAZY!

(I will apologize now for my excessive use of caps in this post. But it's my blog. And I'm in an ALL CAPS mood.)

So I watch an episode of "Deadliest Catch" on Netflix streaming. I finish my last library book and reserve some new ones online that I saw at the bookstore. I watch a second episode of "Deadliest Catch" -- or I start to. The Internet stops working and the rain begins to fall harder.

OK, no sweat. I'll watch a DVD. I have seen every DVD on the boat at least 6 times, and I've seen all of the movies in the last year.

So no DVD.

Well, there must be a book on this boat to read. I haven't pulled any new books down on my iPod for a while because I'd gotten a bunch of new books at the library. This was a MISTAKE. A biiiiiiig mistake.

There is nothing to read. So I read a couple chapters of the Bible. I read the last chapter of a mystery I've already read 300 times. I open my copy of "Navigation Rules," the scintillating publication put out by the Department of Homeland Security.

Finally I find a magazine to read in bed. An old copy of Outside one of my friends gave me when she was done with it.

I lay in my berth as the boat rocks back and forth, back and forth, backandforthbackandforth, and tries to dump me on the floor. I get up for water. I watch the water in my cup slosh back and forth. I feel slightly sick.

Around 2 a.m., I hear a huge thump. Anything hitting the side of the boat makes a huge bang inside. Even people knocking on the door is kind of scary-sounding.

I know that this knocking, which clearly is on the starboard side, is the boat hitting the dock.

I argue with myself for a while. Most boat owners would be blissfully unaware of their boat smacking the dock in the middle of the night, I think. Maybe it won't happen again, I think. Yes, it probably won't happen again. I'll fix it in the morning.

It happened again.

Grumpy as can be I pull on an old pair of Costco Fuggs (fake Ugg boots -- they're warm, OK?) and my Henri Lloyd pink rain jacket over my flannel pajamas. I venture out into the pouring rain to discover that the floating dock has risen in the high water. I can barely stand on the dock, the wind is blowing so hard, but I manage to move my fenders and double my lines.

I come back inside and manage to fall back asleep. After about an hour.

Of course I wake up at 9 a.m. when my alarm goes off and feel like someone has just hit me over the head with a frying pan. So I read the magazine I'd started the night before and answer my e-mail from the bed using my phone. Thank you, technology.

Around 9:30 a.m. my mother calls me. This means one of two things at this time of the day on a school day: Someone is sick/dying/in the hospital or something even worse has happened.

Thankfully, it was neither today.

"I'm on my way home from school," she says.

What?!

Immediately I get out of bed to check a different clock than my alarm clock. Yep. It's really 9:30 a.m.

"Why?" I ask.

"No power. There was a tornado in Parkville last night."

WHAT?!

I open my laptop and start pulling news articles from The Baltimore Sun's website. Damned if there wasn't a severe storm last night in the county! The storm damage pictures on the site feature downed trees the size of cargo ships.

What a nice night to be on the water, right?

It's moments like these that I wonder why I do this...

The haul-out...

So in my last entry about the horrific nightmare that is winterization, I mentioned that I was having my boat hauled out by the marina.

Well Wednesday morning it happened. I was on "flex" as I live in the marina and wasn't too worried about when they'd get to me. I got up early just in case I ended up with one of the first slots and wandered up to the marina office and discovered that Misty would be hauled out at 10:15 a.m. I could live with that. I went back down to the boat to make coffee, have some cereal and get my camera ready. I'd never seen Misty out of the water before. The last time she'd been out of the water, about two years before, I had been away at school and hadn't really wanted much to do with the boat. (I feel guilty sitting in that same boat typing this now -- sorry, Misty!)

Anyway, 10:15 rolled around and coffee in hand, I stepped out to meet the yard guys, who wanted to know if I wanted to drive the boat over or be towed. I wanted to be towed. I wanted to take pictures. Plus I was super nervous. After asking very thorough questions about the location of my keel (fin) and the location of my stuffing box (just ahead of the wheel) and my knot meter (nooooo clue), the guys were ready to tow my boat over and haul her out.



Basically what happens, for the uninitiated, is that they tow the boat to a patch of water with concrete dock on three sides. A large sling apparatus can be driven onto the parallel sides of the dock and a sling can be pulled underneath the boat. Then the boat is lifted up and the slings are driven onto solid ground. I just did a short haul, so the boat stayed in the slings. If I'd been coming out for winter storage, they would have used blocks to brace the boat from the sides and stand her on her keel. But we'll talk more about that later.



I was actually surprised at the lack of barnacles. Sure, she was a little scummy, but not heavily covered in barnacles. This was a good sign.



The marina guys gave Misty a good and thorough power washing (have I mentioned I love this boatyard?) And changed the zinc for me. I'd offered to do the zinc myself, but you can't do any work on your boat when she's in the slings. Liability issue or something. Remember how I talked about winter storage? Putting the boat on blocks? Well whoever painted Misty last was very very lazy. That square block of lighter paint on the bottom? That's where the last boatyard we used didn't move the blocks to paint underneath them. Come spring I'll do the bottom painting myself. Yeesh.



In this picture, you can see the propeller clearly. The knob above the propeller on the shaft is the zinc. Zinc is what's called a "sacrificial." Basically, the zinc is there so that rust will eat the cheap piece of zinc and not the expensive-to-replace propeller. They unscrewed the old one and replaced the new. Zinc, in a boat heavily used, should be replaced once or twice a year. Three times is a little excessive. Twice is extra safe. Once is fine. Doing it less than once a year is not recommended. Of course we've never done that. Ahem.



Anyway, once she was all scrubbed and zinc'd, they dropped her back in the water and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

It's funny. I see the same guys sling boats in and out of the water without mishap every day. But when it's your boat? I don't think anyone could help but worry...

It's good to have someone who can answer your stupid questions...

E-mail conversation between my dad and I about the range we're about to purchase for the boat:

SUBJECT: I know I sound stupid right now and I will probably write about this in my blog later...

... but what exactly do we want? CNG or LPG? Is LPG just propane?

<3 Allie

DAD:

LPG is liquid propane gas. It’s what’s in the can.

LNG is liquid natural gas. You won’t get that, it really takes humongous pressure to liquify ng.

What we want is CNG, which is compressed natural gas.

This is the one I’ve always really liked. CNG is really popular in Europe; this is one that several of the Danes had. Note the nifty broiler you wanted. http://www.seawardproducts.com/3174.htm

Can we get a guarantee on one from one of the salvage yards?


Yeah. What he said. So what do you think, readers?



Finally shopping for the range of my dreams...

There's no place like home...

Well, folks, I just got back from a gloriously relaxing and rejuvenating weekend with my friends on the beach in Virginia. We actually stayed in a town on the Bay called White Stone. I checked? Three days minimum to sail there. Too bad we didn't have the time! It was a beautiful weekend with perfect perfect weather. Steady, light breeze every day and lots of nice warm sun.

I feel so relaxed right now, but I can't tell you how nice it is to be home. I set out my beach chair when I got here, and I've been sitting on the dock watching the sunset ever since.



I guess it really is like they say. It's very nice to go traveling. But it's oh so nice to come home...

Is that a dinghy in your pocket...?

Just like every guy needs a wing man, every boat needs a dinghy. It's just a fact of boating. My dinghy? It was missing. Misty Rose was incomplete. She lacked her wing man.

We'd always kept the dinghy (which was new when we bought the boat) underneath the porch at Oak Harbor. And this year, when I moved back from Washington, D.C., and we decided to look for it, it was missing.



Luckily, when Dad called Oak Harbor to find out What On Earth They'd Done With The Dinghy, they admitted they'd moved it into the shed. Without telling us.

Good thing we asked.

So on my day off, rather than sail, we went down to Pasadena and muscled the deflated dink into the car. And no. I don't have an explanation for the plastic bag hanging out of the back of my jeans.



For the whole year I've lived on the boat there's been a mysterious orange thing in a plastic bag. Apparently it's the dinghy pump. Good thing dad wouldn't let me take it off the boat, huh? I have a whole cabinet on the boat dedicated to Dad's bric-a-brac and crock-a-crap.


Putting the pump together was not too much of a mystery. I mean, I've got degrees. I can handle a pump.


Sadly, the pump came with six nozzles and a pressure gauge, which I never got to work. Maybe I should have stayed back in grad school for a dinghy 101 course.


I resorted to everyone's favorite method of trial and error for fitting the correct nozzle to the pump ports. Interestingly enough the nozzles lock onto the plastic ports. There's a spring-loaded thinger inside each one that needs to be depressed, we discovered, in order for the air to stay in when the nozzle is removed. This was discovered after much pumping.


Here I am pumping.

Dad took a turn. And pumped about 10 times before handing the reins back to me. I am daughter. Hear me roar!


I finished up the job more or less quickly.

And then took a nap on the dock while dad went to get the lock. Pumping is no easy job, OK?


After that, all I needed to do was tie her up and lock her down. Of course I locked her down. I mean, people have no problems stealing hoses and hoses have a lot in common with dinghies. Like... they're both made of rubber.

Now I just need to wash it. It's looking like it spend a couple years under a porch in Pasadena and we can't have that now, can we?

When company comes calling...

The most amusing part of liveaboard life is having people visit. And I'm not talking about my dad or my sailing friends (though I enjoy having them) I'm talking about the vast majority of my friends -- the landlubbers. You know, the non-boat people. The ones convinced that living on a boat must be something akin to camping. Yes, dear reader, I actually talk to non-boat people, God love 'em!

They come a-calling decked out in sweaters and thick socks, ready to brave the cold to spend some time visiting the boat.

Sadly, being the unevolved human that I am, I take a sort of perverse delight in watching the apprehensive come over for a drink or some company in their winter finery only to discover that -- it's just like a teeny-tiny apartment! Go figure.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a girlfriend stay a couple of nights while interviewing for graduate school at Georgetown. Incredulous upon arrival, she said, "Oh this is cozy, I thought it would be like camping!"

Last night, I had a friend over who'd read my blog. Focusing on the phrase, "haven't winterized yet," in an earlier entry, he dressed for cold weather -- which ended up to his advantage walking back to the metro at 11 p.m., but which I am afraid left him rather warm sitting in the salon. "My this really is warm. I'm surprised."

OK, so I definitely talk a good game about sleeping in my fleece pajamas with a down comforter, but that's mostly due to the fact that if I leave the space heater on too high it gets boiling hot, so I turn it very very low and the heat doesn't reach well into the v-berth, which is where I sleep. So I don't have well-placed vents as a house does -- but to me, my Misty is as good as... well... home!

Waging War (Or How Allie Vanquished the Thousands... of Spores)...

When I first decided to move onto Misty Rose, I took a trip down to Pasadena, Md., (where we kept her until I moved her to Washington). Misty hadn't been used all winter, and upon entering it was crystal clear to me that work would need to be done. Intense, hard, back-breaking work.

The largest problem, aside from an incredible amount of collected junk, was mold. And a gross mold smell. But mostly mold. I figured the smell would go away once the mold was dealt with. Ha. Sure it would.

Once I got the collected junk dispatched to Daddy dearest (whose junk -- excuse me, very important stuff -- it was) and to the marina Dumpster (where it belonged) I set in to researching the mold problem.

The first thing I did was take a shop vac and give everything a seriously good vacuuming, clearing the way for cleaning. I then removed the cushions from the v-berth and laid them in the sun for the day. The covers went home with me, where I washed them three times. Yes, you read that correctly, three times. After the first time the covers still smelled musty. The second time I went out and bought bleach substitute (I was worried bleach would ruin the color -- next time I will use regular bleach. The cushions are stained anyway). Slightly better. The third time with bleach substitute got them almost scent free. Then I laid them in the sun to dry and, hopefully, continue to air out.

The skipper whose charter boat I work on had an ozone generator. Upon hearing tales of hard-fought battles against the spores, he suggested that this would kill mold and eliminate stench. More deadly to mold than bleach, he promised. Great! I turned it to "high" and let it run in the boat, completely closed in, for the five hours it took me to scrub the outside of the boat. For this, I enlisted my ever-helpful boyfriend Jon, who was just delighted to help me. Ahem.

The ozone generator, as far as I could tell didn't help so much -- that or the mold decided to mount a counterstrike. I returned it to its owner and researched. Not so deadly as he thought, apparently, and possibly bad for the environment and my health. Great.

Onward and upward to bleach! Ahh the sweet smell of bleach. Yum.

Bleach cleaner mostly eradicated the mold on the pleather ceiling and wall surfaces and the head floor. On the rest of the floor I used Murphy's Oil Soap after the bleach and a stiff brush. And Clorox wipes (well, Wal Mart brand Clorox wipes) and swiffers and much pumping of the bilge. By hand. (We'll talk about the lack of electric bilge pump later.)

Finally, I covered all plush surfaces, cushions, etc. with baking soda vacuum powder, let it sit and absorb (or whatever it does) and vacuumed it up and made sure everything was bone dry.

The scent of mold lingers still, but the spores have been vanquished unto death!

Until I find places like this hidden away in the boat's recesses. Where's my bleach? This war will be won!

Touring the manse...

This is where I sleep, the v-berth. Note the down comforter. I have only one space heater so far, but I went to college in the Pennsylvania mountains. Down comforter it is!



Even though I live on a boat, a girl's gotta have her shoes. That pink bunny in the bottom right corner? My foot. A down comforter isn't enough. I need fleece pajamas. Don't judge me by my pink fleece footie pajamas. They're warm, OK?



The head. I cleaned it today and added "the blue stuff" since I was just pumped out. Moving on...



The center on my morning universe.



The galley! Note the absence of a stove. I have a single burner propane tank until my father finishes making a teak cabinet for a camp stove or until I save $2,000 to have a propane stove and enclosed tank put in. It's a draw on which will happen first...



My closet, aka the quarterberth. Funny story about how I used to keep my clothes in a cabinet that the head pumpout line ran through... good times. Now I keep them here.



The guest bedroom. The clothes hanging on the wall are hanging over a clock. My dad says the clock is worth a lot of money. It ticks. Loudly. Now it is an expensive coat rack. You can see my galoshes peeking out from underneath the coats.



The dining room/tv area/study area/place-I-spend-the-majority-of-my-time.



Lest you forget that I live on a boat, here is the backup propulsion system for when the wind fails me.



And that's my Misty Rose! (This last picture by my Mom.)