Well it is Sunday evening and the Hodges Mariner family is resting from our labors aboard the Misty Lady. Many of you already know, but we have been exposed to a constant rain storm for six days straight. The water in the marina was less than 1 inch from flowing over the top of the dock. As a result the Misty Lady is still docked at the Gingerville Yacht Center. Our new departure date is now Saturday, October 8. We had hoped to be settling into a dockage at the Capital Yacht Club by now, but there you have it.
I did get a nice shot of the Misty Lady at twilight. I was coming back from the parking lot and it was simply a Kodak Moment. The upper doors are showing our television set going full blast and the window on the lower level is the light over our bed in the Master Stateroom.
Cleaning the Bilge: one of the more unappealing tasks on a yacht is ensuring that the bilges are clean. We had earlier paid a local company to clean our bilge and they did a wonderful job,,, on ONE of the three bilges. They cleaned the engine room bilge and evidently didn’t understand that there was a forward bilge and an aft bilge. The aft bilge was, shall we say rather odiferous and the 1st Mate and I decided to clean it ourselves. Oh what fools we might be… When discussing the odor with the Yacht Center owner and soliciting his recommendation, he told me of several products that could be used to clean and sanitize a bilge. Among the myriad products (mostly expensive), he strongly recommended that we use PineSol, that it would do the job just as well as the other expensive treatments and cost a fraction of the money.
So, armed with a fresh bottle of PineSol, our new water hose, a long handled brush and a new hose spray nozzle we began the not wonderful task. Removing the hatch to open the bilge access we were greeted by the sight of really dirty, putrid water. Some algae floating around as well. We dosed it well with PineSol, then allowed it to sit for a while and “work” to prepare the bilge for the actual cleaning. The float that activated the bilge pump had to be elevated manually to get the bilge pump to siphon out the standing water. We also sprayed fresh water into the bilge to moderate the standing nasty water.
After about 45 minutes of flushing the bilge and adding more PineSol, we finally decided that we had done enough for a couple of amateurs and resolved to hire professionals to finish the bilges, check the bilge pumps and clear the residual algae.
At least when we hit our bed for sleep tonight the aroma will be much improved.
Another finding that the six days of rain brought to us was the identification of a few spots where waterproofing caulking will be required. Funny how a constant barrage of water will point out areas where seepage is located. Mother Nature is funny that way. One might think that these things would sort of put us off. Not true, we knew when we bought an older yacht that we would encounter these sort of irritants. The fact it we love the look of our new waterborne home, and we expect that once we have accomplished the final upgrading that we had planned at the outset, our home will be comfortable and nice looking.
Speaking of upgrading, below are two pictures of the Misty Lady’s bridge. Note the plethora of instrumentation on the left picture, this was the before picture. Now note that the picture on the right has much less, in fact one instrument shown to the left of the center is the primary control system. It displays the course, speed, depth of water, radar overlays, and through the AIS linked with the VHF radio to the right, shows all of the other vessels around our area of interest. This system lets us know where the boats are, how big they are, what direction they are headed and their current speed. The primary screen is a touch screen, and interfaces with my IPad navigation and charting software.
The system is also set with a wi-fi connection that will allow me to read the primary control unit display and to update or change the settings from my IPad down in the salon, the galley or anywhere on the boat. Oh my the Digital Age for boating is a real hoot! Also note that the old grungy white bridge canvas’ have been replaced with new canvas using a Navy Blue color rather than the white. The Lady simply has too much white, so we are planning on mitigating the color scheme.
Well tomorrow begins another week in beautiful downtown Edgewater, MD. Charlotte returns to commuting into the DC metro area via Metro subway and I go back to prepping the Misty Lady for our voyage. Sometime midweek next week I expect to receive some training on ship handling to ensure that I do not crash this big boat into a dock or fuel pier, because that would be not nice.
We will also do some shopping for some items to make life a bit more comfortable, such as end tables and lamps.
More to come including the preparation, cast off of lines and departure of the Lady for her overnight voyage home. I intend to post more items of possible interest and to do so more frequently.
Stay tuned!!
Misty Lady Thought and Comment 