I’m sitting in LAX right now, working on killing my 8-hour layover, and marvelling at some of the little things I’d forgotten about:

English. Everywhere. Customs, Starbucks, the adorable twins chasing each other around the terminal, the girl sitting beside me yakking on her cell phone — it’s ALL in English, and I can understand every. single. word. (Haven’t decided if this is a plus or a minus yet…)

Climate controlled living. There are no bugs. No heat. No humidity. I am a perfectly maintained bodily temperature, and have not a creature-comfort-complaint in sight. Contrast this to last night on Brio, when we were sweltering in the humidity that just wouldn’t go away, swimming in 95% DEET and mosquito coils and every other bug-preventing trick we could think of, and it’s all a little… sterile, actually.

Wifi. There is Wifi EVERYWHERE. On the plane, in the terminal, in the restaurants, in Starbucks, in the bathrooms, on the bus that takes you to the way-out terminal that Murphy’s law says your flight will always be flying out of… there is fast, free, wifi. And it’s so fast it’s making my head spin. This might only be appreciable (good word, right??) if you’ve spent 6 months hoping and praying that your little internet-sticky thing will give you a green light and keep working long enough for you to check emails and buy some more internet time… or hunting down restaurants like mad-men with rapid-fire questions (“do you have wifi? how about power? ohh, food too? bonus ”) but for the moment it’s making my life

Lack of food fears. I just ate a bowl of chili, replete with chicken and ground beef and cheese and all sorts of possibly-perishable foods that I’ve been afraid to eat too readily for the last 6 months… and I have ZERO fear of waking up with ‘a bad stomach’ (code for ‘bring on the Imodium’) tomorrow. I know, I know, TMI Leah, but seriously… if you’d experienced as much food poisoning as we have this winter, you’d be fist-pumping airport Chili too

No Jon. After 6 months of sharing our 33′ little space, literally spending 24 of every 24 hours together, wracking up “boat-relationship months” (which I think we’ve all agreed are like dog years — every year you live on a boat with your significant other is like 7 land-years), it’s really strange to not have him by my side…

Especially when I think that at 3 am this morning we were busily caulking windows shut (to make sure there are no leaks while we’re gone), pouring oil in the toilet (it makes an *amazing* difference for the pump), dumping bleach in open buckets (we’ll see if this works — supposedly it’ll cut down the amount of mold growth we get), bundling up the last bits of rice and beans and yogurt for Juan to take home (can’t leave any of that stuff behind), stuffing electronics in the oven (our equivalent of lightning-insurance) and trying to not forget the garbage inside the boat (that was last year’s mistake)… to now be here without him is just… strange.

But that’s what we signed up for when we picked an international marriage and a winter of weekends instead of a 9-5 career life, so I’m going to focus on the positives (all the covers to myself! less Shakira on repeat! …hmm, that’s all I’ve got actually) and keep looking forward. Soon enough we’ll be living together, planning next Winter’s adventures, and this little interlude will be just a fuzzy memory.

Until then… I may just go have another bowl of Chili

I know I’m superstitious, and maybe that’s part of the problem… we never leave on Fridays, knock on wood any time anyone mentions future plans (“we should be in on Wednesday! KNOCK ON WOOD”), and generally try to observe any other Karma-related rules… But both of us had the feeling that our last passage wasn’t going to let us get away easy. And it didn’t.

It all started as planned… not a breath of wind, flat calm seas…

I’d wake up to hear Jon yelling “Hey! Hey! Buddy! Get out of the way!” There were so many turtles floating along that we were literally running some of them down

I really wanted to get a close-up picture of one of these guys (who float along at the surface, poke their heads up when they hear you, give you an evil eye-ball, and then go back to floating) so Jon happily became the turtle-spotter…

And all was good, until it wasn’t. It started with a smell… “Sniff, sniff. Jon? Do you smell something funny? Smells like diesel??” We hopefully checked the jerry cans, hoping maybe one of them was leaking… but nope, wasn’t a jerry can. Checked the bilges, nothing. Finally checked the engine and… yep. Diesel spewing all over the place, from a broken fuel line.

Of course it was 9pm (because all bad things happen in the dark) and there wasn’t a moon in sight. We shut down the engine, and proceeded to go… just about nowhere. Figures that we’d be complaining about NO wind in the Tehuantapec!!

Jon (my hero mechanic) went to work trying to rig up a repair — the challenge being that the line broke right at a fitting, so it’s reeeeally hard to fix.

Anyways, Jon managed to fix it with some epoxy putty enough that we could motor for 8 hours, and knock off almost 40 of our remaining miles. At the 8-hour mark we discovered an inch of diesel floating on top of the floor boards… and figured it was time to give up on the inboard.

Enter the star of the show:

That 15 hp Yamaha outboard pushed our 33′ sailboat for FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT, moving us along at an absolutely respectable 4-5 knots. It was a little stressful coming in to the channel, navigating around the bends in the estuary, and docking in the marina…

But we made it, not a scratch or a complaint, and we are SO FREAKING HAPPY to be here! Our last passage is behind us, we’ve had showers and a nice dinner out… So life is good again

Life is starting to feel a little like one giant passage… which I guess is fair since we’re coming up to the end of our ‘winter’, and the beginning of summer (we only recognize two seasons on Brio ).

Always one for factlets (small relatively useless facts, similar to a droplet), we figured out that we’ve done 5 overnight trips in the last 25 days. This actually doesn’t look as impressive as I hoped it would when I write it down, but let me tell you it *feels* impressive!

Our next passage is one that we’ve been anticipating / dreading since we first bought a boat in Mexico. “The Tehuantapec” is the skinny little waist of Mexico, right at the bottom, and it has one of those rotten reputations that only named winds deserve. It’s 230ish miles, with nothing to see in between, and if we’re lucky it’ll just be one giant motor-boat trip. If we’re not lucky… well, we won’t dwell on that!

Anyways, we’re fueled-up, watered-up, iced-up, fooded-up and even have the damn dinghy on deck and tied down (have I mentioned that we have a much-too-enormous dinghy?? We love it when it’s in the water — it’s like a bat out of hell with wheels — but on deck, it’s… a behemoth. No other word to describe it. So fellow cruisers — if you are coveting a 10’6″ hard-bottom dinghy and have an 8′ you want to trade… we’re your peeps. Seriously). We even got in the *yuck* marina water and scrubbed the handful of barnacles off the prop so Brio is sleek and clean and ready to go.

All of this to say: I’m a little nervous about this trip. It’s the last big passage of the year, and my superstitious self always dreads the last 5% of the year (see last year’s post on this topic) but I’m pretty excited to have Brio in Chiapas, and have our passages behind us for the year, and be able to just relax and enjoy the ‘we made it’ feeling.

SO… see ya on the other side

Leah

PS – Upside of passages? Fresh fish! Jon caught us a gorgeous Dorado on the trip to Huatulco, and then because he’s awesome he made us fresh sushi for an afternoon snack… yummmmmmm

My random story of the day:

In my experience, boats smell funny. Just in general, there’s a sort of boat-y smell that permeates everything and is only noticeable if you leave the boat for a long time and then come back and open the hatches and inhale a big breath of boat-air and go “whooof! Smells boat-y in there!”.

Lately, however, there’s been a new smell drifting around the cabin, and it hasn’t been pleasant. At first I figured it was the leftovers in the icebox… but no, all in there was rosy. Channeling my inner greyhound (no that’s not right — what’s the dog that sniffs things down?? the hunting dogs… hmmm it’s not coming to me, but you get the idea) I isolated the smell to the cupboard that has our holding tank and toilet hoses running through it (yuck).

This was progress at least, and explained why the v-berth had the smell too (we sleep right on top of this cupboard). I figured maybe it was a leaky hose or something, so decided today was the day to investigate. Hauling everything out of the cupboard, I carefully gave each item the sniff test (double yuck), but discovered zero leaky hoses, and zero sources of the smell. Because this is kind of a crappy cupboard (pun intended) and everything in it seemed permeated with this yuck smell, I asked Jon to bag it all up so we could just trash everything in there.

Five minutes later, with a disgusted but somewhat delighted grin on his face, Jon held up the culprit: a hard-boiled egg. Rotting away in a plastic bag. Inside the holding tank cupboard. From EASTER.

Yep, you got it: WE HAD A HARD-BOILED EGG ROTTING IN OUR CUPBOARDS FROM FREAKING EASTER (it even still had the pretty little designs on it that Shamaness had drawn for us). I almost puked on the spot, but managed to shriek and jump around enough that Jon was convinced to take it outside ASAP and stop threatening me with it’s grossness.

How did a rotten egg end up in the holding tank cupboard, you wonder? Me too.

I have no clue; but now when people talk about that ‘rotten egg smell’, I will know EXACTLY what they’re talking about.

And that’s what’s random today

Soooo…. I don’t know if it’s been opposite day or week or what, but despite what everyone had told us, we loved Acapulco. From the cliff divers to the taxi drivers to the snorkelling to the coffee to the high-tech race boats…. Acapulco was a delight for the senses.

(How corny is that, right? “A delight for the senses“? But seriously, it was a beautiful, tasty, awe-inspiring, wonderful stop)…

I was really worried for the middle guy…

…but they always worked it out!

An unexpected bonus of watching the cliff divers? After their crazy dives, they go down and scavenge oysters. A plate of these suckers was *seriously* tasty…

Also tasty? The coffee! “Cafe Wadi” has been in business since 1924, and had the best selection of beans we’d seen so far…

Just because it falls in the category of “what life is *really* like without refrigeration”, I like this pic. We wanted to buy block ice (since it lasts so much better than cubed) so we went to the ice factory… but they didn’t have any bags, and the cabby was not too happy at the prospect of a pool of water in his trunk, so we ran across some death-defying traffic to find a little party store that happily sold us some enormous bags to hold our ice

I’m not the best at taking underwater pics, but we loved the snorkelling in Acapulco…

I don’t know if needlefish pose any danger at all to human beings… but I was afraid anyways

This was also the first time Jon got to test his jellyfish suit for real (there were lots of jellyfish in the water)…

He deemed it a success

According to one of the local guys, Acapulco is where all the big racers in Mexico keep their fancy-pants boats, and they have a race once a month. We were in awe of their crazy high-tech sails, and had an amusing afternoon guessing how many Brio’s we could buy for the price of one of their Kevlar sails….

Our last day in Acapulco found us at a museum. Full disclosure: I am not a museum gal.

But it was a Sunday, and Sundays are free-entry day at the museum, and Jon really wanted to see the Fort at the museum, and I love free stuff, so…. off to the museum we went

And you know what? It was reeeeally good!

Although I liked the temporary art exhibit best, I would definitely say that the museum is a worthy stop. Especially if it’s Sunday

And that’s all she wrote for Acapulco! After (yet another) passage, we’re happily in Huatulco, sucking up wifi and breakfast and friends and just generally loving life! 

Our generous friends on Kalliope grabbed these fantastic shots for us on our passage from Zihuatanejo to Acapulco — thanks guys!!

It’s always so much fun to have pictures of your boat under sail…

The close-up of the pic above is pretty cute (see below)… we’ll call this “googley-eyed lovers gazing at sea”

And there’s nothing like sailing wing-on-wing with a full main and a drifter to get your inner racer’s heart pounding happily We were cruising along at a nice 7 knots in 10-12 knots of breeze… not bad for our little cruiser!!

These are also the first pictures we have of our new mainsail in use. We bought this 9.6 oz, full-batten, triple-reefed, lovingly en-logo’d mainsail for $1680 from National Sails in Florida, and could not be happier with it!

Some days are funnier than others.

Like today: We dedicated today “find a Macbook charger” day, since BOTH of our chargers kicked the bucket in the last week (very. not. good. for someone that works on the computer). Strangely enough, Zihuatanejo (the “fishing village” that reminds me more of a Mexican Whistler that we were in a couple days ago) had a small store with a knock-off charger that we happily bought for $50. It lasted 2 days, so I guess we have to stop saying that Apple chargers are the worst.

Anyways, being “find a charger day” in Acapulco, we started at the dilapidated pier here in the bay, negotiating with a guy smoking Cruella-Devil-style cigarettes, sporting Aviator sunglasses and bright blue boxers (and not much else) about how much it would cost to leave our dinghy for the day. Settling at a number everyone was happy with, we set off for the bus.

Acapulco is the world’s #2 deadliest city in the world. This comforting thought was reverberating through my brain as we hefted Macbook computers, cameras, wallets, boat registration, passports and essentially every other valuable that we own across town, hunting in desperation for a damn charger.

I would *really* like to moan about how we had to visit 4 Office Depots, 2 Office Maxs, 1 Costco, 2 Walmarts, Radioshack, Elektra, Liverpool, McDonalds and Fabricas Francia on our ridiculous search for a charger (McDonalds wasn’t strictly necessary for the hunt — but it was pretty important for the morale recharge)… but I’ll cut to the chase and say that after striking out in all of the above (despite the fact that ALL of the above sell Macbook computers!) we eventually found a knock off version just after we’d completely given up hope in a RANDOM little electronics store. Thank goodness our beloved taxi driver Rafael didn’t lose faith — he and his Volkswagon Beetle made it their personal mission to help us get a charger!

Rafael also kept us quite entertained; when we came out of a store with long faces, having been turned down again (“Cargadores? Para Mac? hahahahaha,” they’d laugh, “no, no, no, no hay en Acapulco!”) he’d turn up the charm and try to convince us once more to get a hotel for the night (“How can you sleep in the little boat? Rock, roll, rock, roll, all night long, no? You can’t sleep like that!!”), or question Jon again about who the Captain of Brio is (“Her? Really? hahahahahahahahahahaha, no, no, no, you are so funny Senor. But really — who is the Capitan??”). We all managed to have quite a day of Spanglish, with Jon even getting in some talk about the split rear ends of fire trucks, as well as a lesson on how to properly eat a mango, and me managing to pick up some fruits and vegetables and figure out what to eat for dinner.

Turns out Thursdays are “Posole” day, a kind of corn and chicken stew that is served with chucharones that literally every restaurant in town brings out — but only one day a week. Rafael said it was his favourite dish, and hey it was a Thursday, so for $4/person we figured why not With a one-man-keyboard-band playing in the background, the 3 of us enjoyed a nice little Posole meal to cap off our long but successful day, and then we called it “fini“. (Oh, and ironic: the keyboard man managed to play the recessional song that we chose for our wedding after Jon hummed a couple bars. We still don’t *really* know what it’s about, but we did manage to learn that it has something to do with colourful bowties. That seems wedding appropriate, right?? )

We won’t talk about how much the taxi cost us (700 pesos ~ about $58) since we spent literally 5 hours with the man, or how much this version of a knock-off charger cost (890 pesos ~ about $74) since I’ve still got my fingers crossed that the darn little red light will just stay on and keep happily charging my computer… but I will say that Apple support is going to get an earful when we get back to our northern countries… and Thursdays are definitely the day to visit Acapulco.

Which, I’d like to also add, is a gorgeous city with some of the prettiest vistas and friendliest people we’ve met so far. I am super glad that we stopped, and am more than happy to pay the $4/day for the dinghy dock and $4/day for the mooring (the final numbers we settled on after our negotiations — so don’t let them guilt you into paying more!).

The ever cheap, ever proud of it,

Leah

PS — We had 19 of these little fellas visit on our trip from Zihuatanejo to Acapulco, and while they’re almost kinda cute, the not-cute part is that the one Jon stepped on (ewwww) left quite a good patch of ink on deck… not to mention that they tend to fall apart when you try to peel their dead and dried bodies off 

It was a very dark night watch.

2:30 in the morning, a tiny little moon, a handful of stars, Shakira singing on repeat, not a ship in sight, the timer set for 15 minutes (just in case I fell asleep before looking around again), and not much to do but sit and stare and watch the ocean slowly go by.

At least, not much to do until I glanced over the side of the boat and saw a GIANT GLOWING ORB.

I know this sound a little crazy — in fact, that’s exactly what I thought when friends of ours first mentioned that they’d been seeing giant glowing orbs at night — but that’s exactly what I saw.

I stood up in the cockpit, holding on to the dodger and hyperventilating as this enormous circle of solid glowing water slowly slipped past the boat. I couldn’t decide if I should scream for Jon, pass out, or find a camera… so I opted to just keep watching.

And as I watched, I swear to you, this giant glowing orb started. to. move. Just a little, just a bit, just enough to convince me that it was definitely something alive (and not a rock, or floating container, or whatever other horrible evils the night-time sleep-deprived brain can come up with).

We’ve got lots of guesses — some sort of current upswelling? A school of very small fish all swimming very quickly in a tight circle? A sleeping whale? (Sleeping whale is the popular vote at the moment — which is reeeeally scary given we passed, hmmm, about 10′ away from the thing). But your guesses would be much appreciated

In the meantime, I think I’m going to stop reading Michael Crichtons for a while

Las Hadas is a funny little place… gorgeous white architecture, crazy dinghy dock fees ($200 pesos/day!), pools to ourselves because the place is literally empty, sketchy showers at the “2nd story pool”, delicious taco-soup dinners with a view, crazy taxi drivers, and 3 pretty blue boats rounding out the anchorage…

We took quite a few pictures while pretending to live the life of the rich and famous….

I’d say we got our $200 pesos worth

Just a quick ‘hiya’ pic from Las Hadas, this crazy awesome looking resort that we’re anchored in front of at the moment

We’re still on the move, but will share a few more pics from this pretty place later!

You’d think we’d never seen a pain-de-chocolate or something, given the extreme excitement going on around here We’ve been in Barra for a week, and I won’t even tell you how much we’ve spent on French pastries, cuz I’m actually a little ashamed***!!! But those croissants, those tartes-de-pomme, those baguettes!

One of the highlights for me has been the chance to practice my French again. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go exactly as planned… For example, the first morning I asked for “dos croissants s’il vous plait“, which is pretty much Sprench at its best.

This morning might take the cake though; the French baker asked me how I was liking the weather, and I replied “je t’aime” (as in, “I love you”). His head tweaked a little, but he wasn’t even ruffled; I think he’s used to a jangle of languages getting plied on him! And Jon thought it was quite funny that I was professing my love to the French baker, but I told him I was just after those pain-de-chocolats

And now?

Well we’re sitting in a small restaurant here in Barra, eating pancakes (Jon) and strawberry smoothies (me) while I try to have a work meeting on Skype. If you can forget for a minute that I’m trying to have a legitimate work conversation, the scene is really quite comical: Mexican roosters crowing, cars driving down the street blaring some commercial for tomatoes over their loudspeaker, internet cutting out every 5-10 minutes, a power connection that runs 80% of the time, and the smell of chile chiquillas in the background… *sigh* thank goodness I work for a seriously understanding lady!!

***Ashamed, but in a way almost impressed too: we’ve spent 685 pesos (~$60) on the French baker in ONLY 5 DAYS!! Yeesh, we need to leave just so we stop buying croissants!

After 6 busy weeks in La Cruz, we had a quick motor out to Punta de Mita, where we *finally* got to put on our snorkel gear Only to clean the bottom and float around, but still it was a nice 27 degree swimming experience!

From there we had a fantastic sail around Cabo Corrientes and down to Barra de Navidad… and got to put our stainless steel GoPro stick to good use (don’t even ask… it was a $40 miscommunication that is quite spectacular to look at! haha)

Unfortunately Jon had a pretty bad reaction to “Vermox Plus”, a drug that’s supposed to clear out any little bugs you might have picked up down here but just managed to make Jon feel like crap… but like a trooper he made all his watches and put up with a rolling, rollicking ride!

I’d say it was one of our nicest trips so far…

I discovered a really terrible sounding (and looking!) recipe that is actually fantastic — it’s called “Mujadara” and is “Lebanese peasant food”. 3 ingredients: Rice, Lentils and (super caramelized) Onions. I can’t imagine a better boat-recipe!

Tried to take underwater pics with the GoPro stick… need to keep working on that

And now we’re enjoying the very protected Barra lagoon anchorage! Just missing the French baker (who should show up tomorrow morning with almond croissants… mmmmm)

Oh, and since it’s the 10th and we’re celebrating our 5-month anniversary (yes, yes, like a high schooler I really am counting months again!!!) we tried to take a cute couple-y picture in the windy anchorage…

And eventually succeeded! Happy 5 months Jonathan

This is becoming a bit more of a maintenance blog than I ever thought it might… but it turns out that after you spend hours/days/weeks working on something, it’s *really* satisfying to tell people about it!

Of course, there was once this exchange:

Leah, 6-years old, sniffling back tears, “Dad! Dad! Dad! A girl at school called me a show-off “
Dad, wise to his daughter’s ways responds, “Well Leah, that’s because you are”.

But back to the projects…

We got our new engine mount installed and the engine aligned… and in the process decided to have a big steel washer made, to help prevent any more wear and tear on the engine (see the photo on the left? That’s not supposed to be rounded out like that).

I also took pictures of all the mounts *after* aligning the engine, so that we can count threads “next time” (next time???) and hopefully be half-way there to having an aligned engine…. in a perfect world, right??

Our big purchase while we were here was 200′ of 1/4″ Hi-Test G4 chain… somebody came on the net one morning and announced that they were selling BRAND NEW anchor chain, so we jumped at it! Saved us having to deal with shipping & customs next year (when we’d planned to get new chain).

Also meant I got to practice my splicing again

And this lovely 100′ pile of rusted 1/4″ BBB chain is the reason we decided to jump on new chain!!

What’s Jon up to now, you ask? Well this is a fibreglass plate that he laid up, cut out and installed in our cockpit floor…

Below is a little ‘before and after’ of the top of the rudder post… the previous bushing was being held in with some kind of crappy plastic material, which if you’ll remember was letting in *tons* of water underway and causing us to feel like we were sinking.

Since we had the machine shop make us a new plastic bushing, we thought it would be a good time to make up a “plate” to better seal the area and hold the new bushing as well (thanks to s/v Puffin for the idea!). Jon did such a nice job on the fibreglass that I couldn’t resist taking a few pics :

My most favourite project though? A BIMINI.

Again, listening to the morning net we heard somebody advertise “a few used bimini hoops” so we jumped over and took a look and Sha-ZAM, he had one that fit our boat!

We bought the stainless steel hoop for $40, an 84″ zipper for $10, and somebody gave us the fabric… so all in all it was a pretty cheap project!

It is SO nice to have a shaded cockpit!

And one last little happy story for you… Jon’s Kindle packed it in (frozen on the sleep screen… tried all the online fixes with no luck) but thanks to the super duper generosity of our friend Mary Jane (who was visiting Banderas Bay for only a week) Jon has a replacement.

We ordered a new Kindle to her house and Jon got to keep Mary Jane’s — and it’s a new fancy one too Needless to say Jon (and his Cussler-addiction) are very happy to be reading again!And now, in my ever-superstitious ways, I won’t say when or where we’re thinking of going just in case I jinx it… but we think we’re leaving soon! Onwards and upwards

Games are one of my favourite parts of cruising; when you’ve run out of Clive Cusslers to read or things to sew, there’s always a good cruisers’ game around the corner…

Although I will admit that I was a little skeptical when Anam Cara first suggested playing croquet on the beach (they’ve got a set on their boat )

Clearly my skepticism was unfounded, as croquet has become one of our favourite games — and a seriously competitive pursuit!

There’s also been quite a bit of the “take the dinghy out in to the middle of nowhere and jump in the ocean to swim around for a while and cool off” game…

A little more of the “work in the awesome shade (and wifi) at YaYa’s cafe to pay for all these games”

More rounds of competitive croquet (this time in the excellently manicured grounds of Marina La Cruz)…

Although some of the wickets have had a few extra challenges (you’ll have to ask Brady if Jon was helping or hindering here… Jon’s becoming well known for his ruthless croqueting )

And, of course, the working on the boat game… behind the “old” (can 3 weeks old really be called ‘old’??) broken mount are our new engine mounts (AGAIN) which we’ve now installed (AGAIN) and done the engine alignment on (AGAIN) so we are *really* hoping that this round holds up a little better than the last!!

While we wait for the second round of new engine mounts to arrive (thank you Shamaness! and yes, yes, we really did have one engine mount die in *less* than a month of use), and for the machine shop to finish up our new alternator mounting bracket, we needed some kind of project to keep us busy…

So we decided to replace the super-clouded, very brittle, very old and ugly cracked windows in our dodger with the new plastic that my awesome friend Zach huffed down on the airplane for us

On closer inspection, we think that the new plastic might be a cheaper style  than we ideally would have used (it came from a Tent & Awning shop in Vancouver) — so next time we’ll order from Sailrite and buy the lifetime stuff — but it’s so much better than the old windows that we don’t even care!

Removing the dodger from its frame was a little frightening — zippers were ripping out, snaps were breaking, windows were cracking… but luckily we had 4 zippers on stand-by, and snaps-to-order from our sailing friends!

Jon told me to put my ‘happy sewing face on’, since apparently I get a little grumpy while stitching… but it’s stressful work!! Sometimes the dodger is the only thing protecting me from the scary world of winds and waves and I definitely didn’t want to screw it up by sewing something wrong!

I should say that “Tip of the Day”, or maybe even “Tip of the Year” for making it easier to replace the windows in our dodger goes to Dan on Dazzler — he suggested that rather than trying to rip out the old windows and then sew in new ones, we simply sew the new plastic right over the old plastic (so the dodger keeps its shape and the windows go in completely flat and beautiful) and then carefully cut the old ones out.

I appointed this job to Jon, and he did a fantastic job.

He’s also very good at demonstrating the “Before and After” of our new see-through-able windows!

So, long story short, the whole thing went super well. We replaced 4 zippers, 5 snaps, and all 6 windows, and although the primary fabric is still a little grungy looking, the overall dodger is much much better!

Just look at how clearly you can see through that front window again!

Oh, and in true random Brio-fashion, we decided to add a Brio Stripe™ to our mainsail cover. Really it’s because our new mainsail is much stiffer than the old one, so the cover wasn’t fitting very well and we needed to do something about it… but also it’s because we like making the boat a little prettier when possible, and thought a racing stripe down the cover would be pretty sweet

And that’s it from paradise! (Where it’s dang hot by the way — just this last week the temps have seriously jumped to the point that we’re sleeping without blankets and having many “where else should we install a fan” conversations!)