Maintenance August 2016

We’ve had a whirlwind month filled with a lot of blissful sailing. However, the more we are in motion, the likelihood for repairs, maintenance, system failure, and problems at sea are greatly increased. So what happened over the last month? Renaming, varnishing, installing, engine repairing, and rigging were all apart of last month’s work in between sailing.

Momento finally got her new name put on in late July. To remove the old one, you have to use a heat gun, which requires plugging into a generator in the dinghy, while bobbing around — a tricky maneuver. The new name gets applied by putting soap water all over the transom, aligning the sticker, removing adhesive back, squeegeeing out the water, and then removing the masking tape from the other side. A lot can go wrong, but it looks beautiful and the old name “Whispa” will soon fade with the sun.

While Moment’s varnish has been holding up since we added a couple coats over the winter, we’ve had to continue to build up Momento’s coats of varnish and it’s looking quite shiny!

The crappiest of all jobs on a boat – head work – was on this month’s list. The forward holding tank needed replacing – you can imagine why. Pulling the old one, replacing vent lines, adding an inline filter were all involved to keep the boat smelling as fresh as possible.

Like any boat, you go in to fix one issue and another reveals itself! On a recent trip up the mast to install a new steaming light, we noticed one cable of the standing rigging starting to defray. The steaming / deck light shine bright. After researching, the closest place would require a full day trip off Cape to have the piece refashioned by a rig shop in Fall River. While there, we also purchased recently broken life-line clasps for our boarding gates on Moment.

On the trip to Nantucket, we noticed a diesel smell. Upon further investigation, the high-pressure fuel line from the fuel pump to one of the cylinders had a steady drip. Once we were in to port and had time to re-seat that recently replaced fitting, the leak seems to have mostly disappeared. It will be something to monitor closely as we deliver Moment south.