1/3 of a year in South Carolina

We have been here a little over 3 months now here is what we are up to these days:

WORKING to make a living again….

Ben is working nights at Q on Bay, a local BBQ restaurant. I am working days as a Math Interventionist at the local Charter Montessori school, Lowcountry Montessori. I work M-F 11am-3pm, and have every other Friday off. Ben works a varying schedule. Generally I get home from work, see him for 20 minutes, and then he goes off to work.

ADVENTURING – settled in style

Ben has been taking the kids out for more adventuring while I’m at work. They have developed a few ‘favorite’ places to visit and continue to return to those over and over again. On weekends I get to tag along too!
These include:
~The Library
~Hunting Island State Park
~Pigeon Point Park
~The Pool

We also visited Savannah, GA for a day and then Ben and the kids went back to tour a US Coast Guard Ship while I was at work. We stopped at a nature preserve on the way home.

The kids and I visited the Kazoo Factory on Monday, which I had off, and Ben was roped into working a double for the day. It is the only plastic Kazoo manufacturer in the USA. We got to learn about the history of the Kazoo, attachments you can use, how they are made, and how they work. We also heard samples of a variety of different Kazoo-like instruments and whistles played. We even got to add the resonated and cap to our own Kazoo to take home with us.

It was a loud day, but we all had a blast!

Homeschool – still relaxed and going with the flow

We have joined a brand new local Homeschool Group as well, and spend a few hours every Friday with them. So far we have:
~Learned to make, bake and decorate sugar cookies
~Learned to make pasta and sauce from scratch
~Had a playground fun day
~Visited and toured the newest library in town

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Its great to have a group of kids for both Tristan and Trixie to play with each week, as there are kids both of their ages who are part of the group. Before this group started the closest Homeschool Group was 45 minutes away!

For schooling Tristan has been working on a variety of projects.
~An evolution/species project on Pygmey Seahorses
~Redesigning the storage in his room to give him more space in his closet and a place to put books
~A Viscosity Science Fair Project (to present to the homeschool group next week!)
~Learning to draw better through a variety of sources
~He will soon be starting to learn to play the Recorder that we just bought him!

We have also been plugging away at
BOAT PROJECTS!

Varnish

We have made strides with the varnishing, on the days that its warm enough to do so, and have the Starboard side Toe-Rail and Rub-Rails DONE!
The Port side needs to be scrapped, sanded and done still. Then we have all the other little parts of the boat that need touching up, around the hatches, around the cockpit, the bow-sprit…….Varnish Forever!

While it is a LOT of work, the reward is pretty amazing, because it just looks SO good when it is done!

Electrical Work

We replaced our shore power inlet. The story goes: We lost power, had no shore power for 3 days before we could make it to buy a new cord, figuring our cord was shot – as it felt hot in a few places. We bought a new cord – only to find out that while our boat takes 30AMP, and we always plug into the 30amp outlet on the dock, the inlet on our boat was a 50amp. Which means our old cord had a 30amp female end for the dock side, and a 50amp male end for the boat side.

Cords don’t come from the store like that. They are either 30amp or 50 amp, not both.

After weighing all our options – we came to the conclusion that replacing the inlet on our boat was the ‘right’ way to go. then we could have a 30amp cord, and if it ever needs to be replaced again, we can simply buy a new one.

Of course, as boat projects go, it wasn’t just as simple as taking out the 50amp inlet and putting in the new 30amp one we bought. The 50amp inlet had 6 gauge wire running to it, but the new 30amp one was only able to take 10 or 12. So after multiple trips to West Marine, many more $$ spent, and a full day of work, we replaced and re-wired the inlet. We now have a ‘fancy’ ELL 30amp cord, which is the newer, safer design of cord.

We added fans and new lights to both of the kids rooms. They lights have a nightlight feature, and a USB outlet to plug things into as needed. This was the first electrical work we did where we had to connect wires with shrink tubing – which meant we needed to purchase a heat gun (the hair-dryer was NOT cutting it).

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Hatches

We re-bedded the forward and aft hatches. Two down, two to go.

Again, as boat projects go these involved more than we expected. We decided to replace all the hardware – as the bolts were all flat head – and a royal pain to get out. Granted once we learned they were bolts with nuts on the other end they were a lot easier to get out – but flat-heads are still a pain.

Getting the bolts our required removing the ceiling and trim around the hatches, then removing the plywood that the trim is screwed into. Then you can (mostly) access the nuts to remove them from the bolts.

Once the hatch is out, all the old sealant has to be painstakingly removed from the hatch and the opening. Silicon is NOT easy to remove from aluminum.

Then you can lay the butyl tape (a type of calking that comes in ‘tape’ form and you can just lay it down, no gooey mess to deal with!) down on the opening and bolt the hatch back on. The tape squeezes out the sides as you tighten the hatch down, spreading over the whole surface.

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The main issue we ran into was replacing the old bolts. No one sells 20 x 1/4 x 3.5″ stainless steel countersunk philips head, flat bolts around here. Sure we could have bought some online, but we were impatient (and watching the forecast for rain as we had gaping holes in our boat).

We did make it successfully through a rainstorm with one hatch re-laid on the opening and a tarp over-top, and a VERY cold night where the aft hatch couldn’t be replaced due to a coat of varnish that needed to dry. I closed the door to our cabin and slept in the salon that night.

So instead we bought bolts longer than we needed and painstakingly cut them to be the right length (after they were installed.) We cut the first few with the hack-saw and dremel (although the hack-saw was way more effective) before we realized we had a grinder that would make the job exponentially easier.

Unfortunately the forward hatch still leaks when it rains – but its leaking around the lens (which you may remember we re-did in August, we didn’t do the best job….). So we need to replace the lens – again.

Downsizing…..still

Yes – even though we live on a 42′ boat, we STILL have TOO MUCH STUFF!

We continue to make piles of things we don’t need and eventually truck them off to the dump/thrift store/recycling station. We periodically go through the stores of stuff we haven’t touched since moving aboad, and re-evaluate if we need to keep said things or not.

Many thing we do decide to keep, despite not having used them, as they are things we know we may need some-day. This includes the copious amounts of tools and spare parts we have, along with bags, manuals, sewing supplies and more.

We have cleared out our forward head, so you can actually SEE the toilet (that we don’t use and plan to remove some day.) I am a person who likes the calmness of seeing order and cleanliness, so I’m constantly initiating downsizing and cleaning aboard.

Coming up……

Bug-Magedden II – the interior version……

Tristan starts little league baseball in another week – and he is super excited. He had tryouts last weekend and will find out his team next week. Then they will have 5 weeks of 2 practices a week, and then 6 weeks of games only. We got him new cleats for baseball – and they are purple, and AWESOME!

Tristan is also turning 9 in 2 weeks! He has requested that we go sailing or disc golfing for his birthday.

We haven’t been golfing since we got down here, so we are all itching to go throw. We also haven’t been sailing since we got here – as the logistics of it are much more complicated down here. We can only leave/return to the marina at high tide, preferable slack high tide – which isn’t conducive to a ‘day-sail’. Also, there isn’t any place to ‘sail’ until you motor for 2+ hours to get out of the river. We all can’t wait to get out on the water again. We are dreaming of summer days in Maine and the wonderful cruising grounds that are everywhere in our home state.

…and more family fun!