Today we cleaned. Today we shopped. Today we repaired Ling-Ling.
I hate cleaning. Shopping isn't so bad though. Working on Ling-Ling is just plain old painful.
We knew that my brother, his wife and three kids would be joining us for the weekend, and would be arriving on Friday evening. We knew that each of the older kids would need a place to sleep, as would David and Yvonne. We knew that all three staterooms were used for temporary storage. We knew that we had a lot of work to do to make the rooms habitable. We started cleaning.
Michael's type A personality started surfacing; we didn't only focus on cleaning the three staterooms that needed to be done, we also cleaned the utility room, our stateroom, the main saloon and the pilot house; to sum it up, we cleaned the entire boat. While I worked on the staterooms, Mike started working on the utility room.
I found storage places for the new TV antenna that hasn't been installed yet and stowed our harnesses and jack lines. That completed the port stateroom. Next, I focused on the starboard stateroom. There really wasn't much to do there. We have several 5 gallon boxes of coke syrup that needed to be stored; unfortunately, there really wasn't anyplace to store them. So I moved them as far out of the way as possible. Fortunately, the main living space of the V-Berth didn't require work since we try to keep that stateroom completely ready for habitation at all times.
I emerged from the forward of the boat to see most of the contents of the utility room occupying the companionway aft and the main saloon. Unfortunately, there was nothing that could be done about the insulation that we still need to install; however, we managed to stow a sizable chunk of everything else in various storage areas. The utility room was now complete.
Next, Mike focused on getting Ling-Lings new water pump belt installed while I worked on cleaning the pilot house. Mostly the pilot house needed picking up. When we travel offshore for a long period of time (more than 6 hours or so) things tend not to make it further than the pilot house, so at the end of each voyage, we have a lot of clean up to do with coats and foul weather gear and everything winding up on the pilot berth. It isn't difficult or time consuming, just tedious and as such is one of the last things we do. Generally, we wind up doing this the day before a new passage.
While I completed the pilot house, Mike put the new plastic protector on the water pump and attached the new belt to Ling-Ling. To get the final tension on the belt right, it took both of us and 2 enforcer screw drivers. It was a good thing that we picked up several in Wrightsville Beach! Once that was done and the sound shield back in place, we could focus on the last bit of work in the main saloon. Since we spend a lot of time there, the main saloon was actually relatively easy to clean.
Once everything was done, we took a break while trying to remember what else it was that we needed to do. Finally, it dawned on us. We would have 5 additional people on the boat, three of whom would be children; we needed to go grocery shopping to get food for the weekend as well as 'kid stuff.'
Off to the store we went, and boy did we shop! Of course, I was concerned that we hadn't purchased enough 'kid stuff,' but Mike assured me we had. So after stowing everything, we realized that we would get a day off Friday.
As a treat, we went down to a neighborhood bar and spent an enjoyable evening out.
Voyages