One reason we choose to buy the boat we did, is because she came fully equipped. The previous owners had taken a multi-year trip through the Caribbean and South America before putting her up for sale, so she is outfitted for long-distance off-shore cruising. Many of the other boats we looked at would have needed quite a bit of upgrades to make her ready for what we plan to do. This boat came with (almost) everything. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a ‘perfect’ boat that comes exactly the way you need it to be, but Jelanea was pretty close.

Some things of note that she came with:
Tools – ALL of the tools – basically every tool you could ever dream to need on a boat
Spare Parts – so many spare parts. We have spare parts for our spare parts for our spare parts…
Dodger, Bimini and FULL enclosure for the cockpit, plus a mosquito net that engulfs the whole cockpit
Jerry cans for Diesel, Gas and Water
Additional propane cans (2 20lb and 2 10lb for a total of 60lbs of propane we can carry)
Brand New Mizzen and Staysails (used for the 1st time on our trip from MA to ME)
SCUBA gear – 2 tanks, 2 regulators and 1 BC (we plan to replace the BC because its way too big for us)
A 1 gal/hour water maker, and a spare 4 gal/hour water maker
A whole boat water filtration system, plus an additional filter to use when filling the tanks
Hatch Covers, Handrail Covers and spare material for additional covers or repairs
Magma propane grill

There was a LOT of stuff on board when we took over ownership, and we took a whole week of ‘vacation’ from work to sort through it all, decide what to keep (and where to keep it) and what to get rid of. A lot of the things we wanted to keep had previously been stored on the kids new bunks, so we needed to find other homes for them. We also had to make sure to leave room for our own things, clothes, toys, books, etc. Our boat is now organized in a way that works for us, all of our things are cataloged for ease of finding them, and we have moved our personal belongings on board as well, at least some of them.

We have realized that despite our efforts to downsize when selling our house and only keeping the essentials, we still have too much stuff, and we have a pile of things in storage we need to downsize again someday soon.

The kids were so excited to have the boat, that once she was in Maine we only stayed one more night at the apartment we were renting before moving on board for good. The first week was fairly chaotic, as we learned how to operate as a family in a smaller space. We also all had to learn how certain systems on the boat worked, and we already have a list going of repairs/upgrades that we plan to make.

We were all happy to finally be in our forever home though, and with so much for us all still to learn, we are excited to get to know our new home better every day.

After a gorgeous day bringing our boat up to Maine from Massachusetts, with a crew of 5, we were safely at our dock and the crew had all departed. We were officially alone on our boat for the first time. After a celebratory dinner and fancy desert out (the kids were at Nana’s, we had to take advantage of our kid-free night!) we return to the boat to start our life as live-aboards.

Life didn’t wait long to throw us right into depths of sailboat maintenance. I had dropped Ben off to use the bathroom (more on our on-board head situation later) and returned to the boat myself. Only a few minutes after lying down in bed to read did I hear every boat owners favorite sound. Drip……drip……drip.

It wasn’t hard to find the source of the drip, it was pretty obviously coming from the engine room. This was the first (of I’m sure many) time I was thankful we did buy a center cockpit boat, and therefore have oodles of access to our engine room. I opened up both sides and found that it was the prop shaft that was steadily dripping.

Ben returned to find me on my hands and knees in the galley, head halfway into the engine room, with a light shinning on the prop shaft.

We allowed ourselves a moment of panic – ‘Are we going to sink our boat our first solo night aboard?’ and then we dove in to finding and fixing the problem.

As things tend to do (especially when you don’t know what you are doing) things got worse before they got better.

Seeing a hose clamp on the prop shaft, we figured tightening it was what needed to happen, it must not have been tightened enough. Simple enough, so we thought.

We knew where the socket wrenches were kept and dug them out and found the right size. I had barely attached the wrench to the nut when water started gushing out of the prop shaft.

What?

I tried again with the same results. Every time I touched the hose clamp water would gush into the bilge.

Okay, so maybe we were going to sink our boat on our first night after all….

Not knowing what else to do, we swallowed our pride and called the previous owner, who had just left the boat in our capable(?) hands a few hours before after helping us transport her from Massachusetts to Maine.

He explained to us how a drip-less stuffing box is put together, two ceramic washers, one that spins and one that doesn’t, and that sometimes if something gets stuck between the two, then it can drip.

We were momentarily amused that our first bit of boat repair involved a drip from something that had ‘drip-less’ in its name……

After emptying the bilge from the water that had already dripped (or gushed as it may be) the best solution was to run the engine at idle and put it in gear. This would spin the prop and hopefully dislodge whatever was stuck between the two washers.

The other option was to keep letting water gush into the bilge by manipulating the rubber gasket. We quickly decided that not filling our boat with water was our preferred first method to try.

After thanking the previous owner for his help, we turned the engine on and let it run for 10 minutes at idle speed but in gear to spin the prop.

We checked the prop shaft a few times while it was running, and it was now slinging water around the engine room. Great.

After shutting off the engine we checked again, and while the shaft itself was still a bit damp (from all that water slinging) it didn’t seem to be dripping anymore. Sure enough, not another drop fell from the prop shaft.

So no, we were not in fact going to sink our boat on our first night alone aboard.

Thank Neptune for that!