The never-ending project to fill my hole in the ocean while bailing it out

Season ‘06 is over, bring on '07!

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"Slick," a neighbor's cat who adopted me when but a roaming kitten (actually named Ozzie by its owners, Roger & Josie).  He assisted yesterday by overseeing my winter preparations of Chip Ahoy, beginning with off-loading everything that's coming into the house.  Slick would make a great boat-cat; he seems to enjoy roaming about the deck, climbs up the ladder and joins me whenever I'm out there working aboard and he's around.  He loves crawling through open cabin lockers to beneath the cockpit, exploring the bilges.  (Nov. 11, 2006)

Chip Ahoy's original intake and exhaust fuel locker cowl vents.  Last spring I looked into getting them re-chromed -- but it would have taken too long as I was preparing to launch.  I decided to wait until fall, then send them off over the winter.
Chrome-plated cast brass, they are the best quality I've seen -- more substantial than the after-market models I've looked at.  They'll be perfect with a new coat of chrome plating.  I shipped them off to South Shore Plating Co. today.  (Nov. 17, 2006)

The cowl vents came back from the rechromer in Quincy on Dec. 4th:  chromed, polished, and looking like new if not better!

SEE:  The Fuel Locker Cowl Vents:  Before and After

One of the annual steps in winterizing Chip Ahoy after removing the VHF antenna coax cable is to seal the deck cable connector (Blue Sea CableClam).  I cut a small circle from an old inner tube (bottom-center), then insert it above the tapered rubber stopper through which the cable runs when it's connected.  (Nov. 18, 2006)

Once the cable connector is reassembled, it's water-tight for the winter and spring, until I raise the mast to launch, connect the antenna cable.  Next spring I have to replace the coax cable due to the lightning damage last summer.

Chip Ahoy, emptied and ready to move to its winter parking location alongside the house.  Everything that was aboard has been moved indoors, much onto the front porch, boxed and waiting to be sorted, cleaned and stored away for the winter.  The batteries are stored on a piece of plywood in the laundry room, soon to be hooked up to the battery charger.

Chip Ahoy parked where it'll remain for the next four or five months.  Wally Riddle's "Carpe Diem" is parked further back alongside the house.  It was a comfortable day to work outside, but is likely the end of a stretch of unseasonably warm temperature in the high-50s - low-60s, though it rained all week until today.

Tomorrow I'll get Chip Ahoy's PVC skeleton frame set up over the mast and hopefully the boat covered with its tarps.  Wally is coming by on Monday to empty out the leaves and cover "Carpe Diem" too.

Today I dug out the PVC pipes from behind the shed and laid them out alongside the boat.  When I removed them last spring, I numbered each with a supposed "waterproof" Magic Marker, so I could put them back in the proper order.  The markings had disappeared, washed off, darn.  (Nov. 19, 2006)

After figuring out the order and position of each, I lashed them to the lifelines and stern pulpit.