Moving aboard
Early October
We have been in constant motion after moving aboard Blue Turtle a little over a week ago. All of a sudden, the name was painted, the chainplates were on, the mast and rigging were up, and the through hulls were completed, and she was gently transitioned into the water. This was a tentative move as the plumbing was not completed, but the space in the yard was needed, so someone made the decision that the rest of the work could be done when she was back in the water. Unfortunately, two of the new through hulls started leaking, so she was hauled again the next morning (which was kind of a fiasco as the boat lift got a flat tire, and then had a fuel line issue, so the haul was postponed another day), put back on land, and repairs were made to one through hull and redoing the fairing for the new transducer. Everyone held their breath as she went back in the water and all seemed well, and we moved aboard that night. Because of all the scheduling changes, we’d been extending our AirBnB rental two nights at a time, and we ended up moving aboard after I finished seeing clients at 6 on a Thursday, and I hopped off the boat, sweaty and disoriented, the following morning to work in an office space I rented from a lovely counseling practice in Brunswick.
Do you think they’d let me drive this thing?
My cozy temporary office space that is the anteroom to a bank vault, so there is a giant metal door behind me as I see patients.
That was a long sentence. I’ll let you catch your breath. But not too long, because we immediately set to work trying to figure out a home for everything, with disoriented animals, a little bit of power, no air conditioning, and hardest of all, no water. Because the plumbing hadn’t been completed until the through hulls were certain, that meant that there was no plumbing from the water tanks, and no plumbing for the drains (this is important), and the engine hadn’t been reassembled because it needs plumbed seawater for cooling. The scary thing is that any time it rained, water that got into the cockpit drained into the engine compartment, because it didn’t have any drains plumbed, only holes. And it rains quite a bit here in coastal GA.
As of last night, WE HAVE PLUMBED WATER! For a week, though, we had plastic containers of water (so sorry, planet!) but had to be super careful not to let any water drain anywhere. Because the engine is not assembled, we are tied right next to the boat haul out well, a half mile from the nearest bath house. Much schlepping was made with a cart from the car parked by the bath house to and from the boat. Kevin had a quick emergency trip to Boston two nights after we moved aboard, leaving me alone on the boat, afraid that rain might swamp us. I felt reassured by the long list of contacts that he gave me for friends from the marina who would, without question, help me out if anything went awry. And nothing did, other than utterly exhausting myself going up and down that half mile dock as I continued to organize and straighten.
A friendly sea turtle checked us out! Apparently they like to eat the growth on the boat, which is fine by us.
A case of recurrent food poisoning have laid the man low, and he’s continued to troop along, still working so hard to get things working. We repaired the air conditioner in the aft cabin twice, but will be replacing it, and until then we just have fans and open port lights for air, which can make it tough to sleep (for him. I am conked out entirely.)
He also found a short in the AC panel that limits where we can get power. At this point, I feel like that’s the least of our concerns, but it is probably a bigger deal than I realize.
And in the end, we are fully living aboard Blue Turtle. It’s still a work in progress, and Kevin keeps saying, “Bit by bit, we’re bringing her back to life.”
This marina has incredible sunrises and sunsets.
I am continuing to work 9-11 hour days for my private practice, so I feel like I’m not much help. But my non-professional services are now required, as we now plan to redo the cockpit enclosure, so I am going to use a maker space that is kindly offered by a local canvas shop (owned by people who live on their boat in the same marina as us, and who have the cutest dog) to sew vinyl and isinglass. I’m more than a little intimidated, but also a little excited by the challenge. This is the best of fabric/dimensional engineering, and with any luck as I gain skills and experience, this is a service that I could employ wherever we go in the world to support boaters. Canvas work is always in demand.
And in two other little tidbits, Kevin saw a manatee by the boat this morning! Sadly I missed it. And, although it has nothing to do with sailing or the boat, but because I am still in a state of excitement about it, I learned about the field of applied biophysics from a Radiolab episode, and the fact that cells seem to communicate/select for proteins using little pulses of light! There are just no words to express the joy that I feel knowing about this, and the desire to know more. I am so glad to be alive at a time when this kind of science is happening, even though I’m a little regretful that I didn’t know about this field of study sooner.