By Rich

Holidays. Brutal cold snaps. Rain. Emergent house projects. Deferred auto repairs. Life has been throwing everything it can think of to keep us away from boat projects but we continue to try to fight through and make progress whenever we can.

On cold nights I huddled in the shop and repainted the second set of dorade vents. 

We purchased an inflatible second-hand from a work friend, and spent a couple of evenings checking it throughly for air leaks, completing a service and testing of the motor, and moving over mounts for our transom davits.

Our diesel mechanic has been hard at work completing a compression test on the Westerbeke 46 diesel (it passed easily), checking over the injectors, and drilling out a broken intake manifold bolt we discovered at the survey. Friday he pulled out the prop shaft so it can be checked for runout back at his shop.

Finally, today I got a chance to rebed the sailing instrument pedestal that exhibited a terrible rainwater leak this fall after we took the dodger off. It had been sealed with silicone, which is a big no-no on a part like this. After thoroughly removing the old silicone, I used butyl tape on this project and to re seal the diesel filler neck as well. These are the first times I’ve tried butyl tape and I find that I love working with it.