Sailing Terrapin

House is sold, bus is in storage and we have officially moved from Utah to Virginia. It was a 2,300 mile drive and in true "Baxter, Molly & Kala style", we made it in 2.5 days…with stops in Salina, KS and Huntington, WV. Kala had the worst of it with a small cave-like space carved out in the backseat with a thunder of things falling on her every time we hit a right turn a little too fast (i.e. over 50 mph)...she is a tough girl.

Making the transition to something you've done before is always easier the second time. The walk up the ladder to our house that is 20 feet off the ground is familiar but the last two times we've done this, we were able to live in the Sportsmobile - this time, the Subaru makes things a bit different - especially for Kala. Although, every day gets a little easier and our routines are becoming, well, routine.

It has not stopped raining since we arrived on Monday at noon. Even when it's not raining, it's drizzling, which makes boat projects difficult. Of course, most of the projects are contingent on each other - for example, we need to have our initial 500 h service done on our new (2013) engine...but we can't do that until we go in the water. We can't go in the water until we get the bottom painted and buff the hull. We can't paint the bottom and buff the hull until it stops raining. By we, I mostly mean Baxter...

Baxter, being as resourceful as he is, has found things (not that they escape us by any stretch of the imagination) to do indoors until the rain stops...but these are the type of projects most people procrastinate on as long as possible..but needless to say.

When we purchased Terrapin, our bilges (think of a bilge as the gutter on your house but on the bottom of the boat) were plumbed to the galley and the head. So if you're mapping this out in your brain as you read, you will eventually realize as we did, that the water never really leaves the boat. That is not what we want - we want water on the outside, air on the inside. So we (he) replumbed and wired the forward bilge pump to travel aft and out a new thru hull. He also installed a new high-water alarm so lights are flashing and sounds are going if there is a lot of water in the bilge. In addition, he plumbed and wired a new bilge pump in the aft portion, under the shaft. He had installed that thru hull in 2013.

Other projects include...cleaning the fuel and swabbing the fuel tanks. He also checked the water tanks and hoses so we can stop having to carry water bottle by bottle up the ladder every few hours.

The most important thing we have learned is that we love being on Terrapin - it is such an awesome boat and no place we'd rather be. We can't wait to see what new adventures she has in mind.