quite a ride so far

It's been quite a few days for us and Chewb-a-Doo. Some major ups and downs. I'm constantly asking myself about my sanity and what the hell I am doing. My main obstacle and fear has always been docking a 44-foot vessel. Learning that I didn't know about prop walk and prop wash. Oh SHIT. Apparently, it's a must-know if you want to move a boat in tight quarters. I had no idea that you can go from forward to reverse in one stroke. I had no idea that you can actually turn a boat almost on a dime. And you have to know a pivot point? What the hell does that mean? It never occurred to me to stop a boat. Just plain stopping wherever you are, not just in a slip.

No worries, we hired someone. Captain Maureen, she doesn't come cheap, but damn, she is worth every penny.

We now had two sessions with her. The first one was mostly a crash course. Eric and I decided the next day to put in practice what she taught us as far as leaving the dock. It was a NO! We did make it out of the dock only to end up sideways in the fairway. We made it back to the slip and called it a day.

After the failed attempt at leaving the dock, we decided to leave the boat on battery power instead of plugging it back in. We wanted to see what we could handle being off-grid. Everything was fine except the fridge. The temperature kept creeping up. Even when we plugged back in, the temperature just kept going up. I was completely deflated, and all I could do was go to bed and hope for a better day.

And we had a better day. Captain Maureen came on board again on Thursday. Practicing docking and moving in tight quarters was on the agenda. This time I made sure that Eric was part of the practice. He did great because moving with engines is his jam. He was able to do everything with ease. Keep in mind, though, that he had to listen to my fails numerous times before. She had him coach me on turns and docking. He was much calmer than the day before because he understood now how the boat worked. We docked several times before it was time for the Captain to go.

Because we left on a high we thought it would be fine to work on a boat project. We have two fuel filler hoses. They were mentioned on the survey as being cracked and needing replacing. Upon our inspection we found they were not only cracked but literaly falling apart. So we ordered a 1.5 inch hose at West Marine which had arrived on Wednesday. Today was a good day to work on this.

If anyone knows us, you know things just don't go smoothly. We started cutting the hose out and found too late that the tank was really full. Diesel started spilling. Panic. We had to siphon out the diesel from the tank. Too late we figured out there actually was a dipping stick that we could have checked the level with. The old hose was holding the fuel at bay. So I ran back to West Marine to get a hose and two jerry cans. Siphoning wasn't working yet we needed a pump. Back on the road with the two of us to Harbor Freight. The siphoning contraption was almost a hundred at West Marine, we found a manual pump for less than $10. Grabbed another jerry can and headed back to the boat. Eric was going to siphon and I headed to Walmart for some diapers.

Eric ended up siphoning 15 gallons from the tank, but we still had a lot to do. The next big task was getting the new hose on, which was no easy feat. It was a really snug fit. I heated the hose while Eric pushed it on, and after what felt like forever, we finally got it in place. We double clamped it, and that was a wrap. Eric was a mess, covered in sweat and tar, so I sent him off to shower while I tidied up the boat.

The old fuel hose was disintegrating into tar and created quite the mess

But at night, Eric started getting anxious about the diesel fumes. A lot had gathered in the bilge. While I was sleeping soundly, he siphoned off another 3 gallons. Luckily, none of it ended up in the bay. That would have been an environmental nightmare and slapped us with a $15,000 fine. We had to put up with an oily bilge for the next few days because diesel kept leaking in from somewhere.

Lessons were learned and new strategies were implemented for the second fuel filler hose. There are two 30-gallon tanks, one on each side, so two hoses. First off, we went for a slightly bigger hose. We knew that it needed to be snug, but decided there was no reason for us to have to stretch out the hose to make it fit. Second: we obviously siphoned off 10 gallons.

There was an initial scare with the electricity after we tripped the breaker and the boat stopped recognizing shore power. We had plugged in the shop vac to blow fuel through the hose. Eric, after a while, was able to fix the problem, not without some bleeping, however. It also gave him the first dive into the lazarette.

The new hose fit snug and we were done in a fraction of the time.