On The Hard

About two weeks ago Sam and I took the currently named "Seaquester" out for her last sail under that name.. The next time that she hits the water she will fly under the name of "Tilikum". We were taking her from Mahone Bay to Bridgewater.

We left Mahone Bay at 5pm Friday night and set a course for open water. We headed straight out into the Atlantic to test out our rig, practice some sailing maneuvers, and to get a taste for what the next few years of our lives could look like. It was great sailing, and as George Castanza might say "The sea was angry that day!". Turns out our trip coincided with the passing of Tropical Storm Henri off the coast of Nova Scotia. We figured we would be able to test ourselves and our vessel in somewhat demanding conditions. Everything went great! We managed to cover around 75 nautical miles in about 14 hours. Definitely learned a lot about the boat and what living is going to be like while at sea!  We even made a pilot for Sam's new nautically themed Aussie cooking show (a part of it is in our teaser video below). We set up shifts in 3-hour increments which seemed to work ok for us. With the high winds and large swell, we decided to put a double reef in our main sail and roll in a third of our blade jib. Jeeves, our current (30 year old) autopilot system, seemed to really enjoy the slop and performed pretty good, considering it was built during a time when eight-track tapes were "rad". Once we sailed about 15 miles out, we half considered continuing on to Bermuda! Then we realized we probably didn't bring enough canned ravioli and zoodles to make the trip

We arrived at the mouth of the LaHave early Saturday morning and made our way up the river to where our crane we had rented was waiting for us. We slapped the straps around the Seaquester and lifted her into the air and onto her stands.

It's been two weeks since we hauled the boat at the Bridgewater Wharf. Since then Sam and I have been hard at work refitting the boat, knocking off the items on our long list one by one!

Sam and my days have basically consisted of waking up, going to work, working to the boat, going to sleep, and repeating. I'm not sure how our wharf neighbors feel about the sounds of sanding, grinding, and drilling going on all the time even late at night, but then again our neighbors are mostly rusty abandoned warships and old fishing trawlers.

We are trucking along at a good pace and were happy with our progress thus far. We've had so much help from our fellow South Shore cruising friends (Thanks Dave, Rick, Luke, Pat and everyone else!) it has made a lot of the jobs go much more smoothly than Sam and I could have imagined! Here is a list of everything we've ticked off of our list so far.

Fair and fiberglass the keel and rudder
Clean the bottom
Give the rudder and keel a new barrier coat.
Replace rotten floorboards
Re-rig mainsheet
Replace main haylard
Replace topping lift wire
Re-wire stern light
Re-wire running lights
Install cabin and cockpit speakers
Inspect thru-hulls
Inspect chainplates
Inspect standing rigging
Inspect rudder post and bushings
Remove stanchions
Install emergency bildge pump
Install float switch
Fill fiberglass chips in bow
Secure cutlass bearing

There is still a ton of really big jobs to go but we're happy with how much we've accomplished in two weeks! Tomorrow will be the one month mark until we will leave Nova Scotia headed to New York on one of the most epic journeys in our lifetime!

All for now!

Cheers.

Will