Sail Far Live Free

I spent a lot of laboriously joyful hours on the boat this summer and fall. I've made a lot of progress towards making her seaworthy for next season. She's also half-way presentable now, after 4 months of TLC. Even though our Helms 25 was never in the water during the 2007 season, it's still a sorrowful day when she has to be wrapped and stored, not to be uncovered again until spring of the new year. But don't shed a tear for me. I've got plenty of sailboat related activities to take care of over the winter. Here's a partial list: patch the sails, clean the sails, cover the foam cushions, begin sorting/organizing gear into bins, learn knot tying skills, and on and on and on. I'm actually looking forward to the sailing off-season and all of the things I'll learn, read, build and restore.

I was messing around with MS Paint and decided to see what color combination we might want to use when we paint the hull next spring. The line drawing in this post is something similar to what we're thinking of. Ideally, the blue would be a darker color, but you get the idea. The gelcoat is beyond repair and my several epoxy patch jobs have left the hull looking rather dull. So we'll definately be painting it early next spring before the splash day!

For this week's quote, I'll borrow from the 19th century writer/poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is another quote about taking whatever life brings in stride, said with sailing metaphors, of course. To achieve, we must take the first step and keep moving! "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor."  - Oliver Wendel Holmes

This post is all about the cabin of our Helms 25. Just like the rest of the boat, the interior needs a lot of work. I wish I had taken picture of the cabin on the day we brought her home. I'm sure the parental controls on many of your computers would have kept you from seeing the pictures...that's how dirty she was! But now the interior has a had a thorough bath of bleach and Comet, along with two coats of paint on most surfaces. The ceiling and the floor still need to be painted. However, I'm still working on sealing the ceiling (tongue twister!) and will in all likelyhood use something like DriDeck flooring in the cabin sole. Most interior teak has also had one coat of MinWax Tung Oil applied. At least one more coat will be added before winter. I also need to build a dinnette table that will convert to a bed for one of the girls, resurface the cushions (Erin's goal for the winter!), and add a few things like a handheld-VHF holder, oil lamps, etc. The idea is to ke...