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!

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!

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!