In the Boatyard with the Baby-Kid and the Chainplates and the Rigging Bits and the Sabre 42 Sailboat Rot (in St Marys, GA)

I know, I know, he’s not much of a baby anymore. Turns three next month, in fact!

Boat toddler

He quit napping last month (currently topping my list of “worst moments in my child’s life”, followed quickly by “the first time he puked in my open mouth” (#momfail), “that time I encouraged him to ride down the ramp on his balance bike (and straight into the ocean)”, and “last weekend when my newly-purchased cappuccino was sacrificed for an emergency playground pee”).

On the beach in Amelia beach while Jon does Sabre 42 projects

So of course he’s currently asleep in the truck. My kid, who has NEVER napped in cars, has been asleep for an hour while I’ve sat on the side of a random road wondering if this is a good thing or just another bump in the road to post-nap-schedules?!? At least it gives me a moment to type out a little blog post.

Toddler on a Sabre 42 sailboat making a fun mess in the galley

Zephyr and I have officially been living in the boat yard for 4 months.

Living in the boatyard with a toddler on the hard is sometimes hard

I’m at this point where I really want to document the progress and projects we’ve been working on, but things are mostly like 80% done so there’s a part of me that say WAIT UNTIL IT’S 100%. Except sometimes it takes us years to actually make it to 100% (*cough* deck rot *cough*) so if I don’t share when we’re at 80% I’ll just never get to talk about it! #extrovert

Boneyard Beach in Big Talbot Island Park

SO, with that in mind, here’s what we’ve been up to lately…

Sabre 42 Sailboat Hanging Locker with New Shelves
This mini-project barely warrants a picture but adding SHELVES to our hanging locker has made a huge impact to my day-to-day life!

Our custom rigging bits have come back and are installed, so we are now one VERY big step closer to having wire rigging on our Sabre 42.

Converting our Sabre 42 sailboat's rig from rod to wire rigging

Some of these boats originally came with wire (as opposed to the rod rigging ours came with) so we’ve been able to leverage new friends and pictures of their rigs to get ideas 🙂

Converting from rod rigging to wire rigging on our Sabre 42 sailboat rig

Jon is now working on creating brand new chainplates.

They are VERY shiny. Drilling 1/2″ thick stainless steel is a little daunting but there’s a drillpress here and Jon can teach himself anything, so it’s working out great. After some debate on how to best approach it, clamping the new stock to the old chainplate and using that as a template has worked the best.

Currently 8 chainplates are done and the last 2 are with a machine shop to get bent (forestay) and welded (backstay), so the end is in sight!

We have not managed to get any more coats of red paint in — we’ve confirmed that the finish is 100x better in 75°F plus weather and it just hasn’t been warm enough on a dry, non-working day yet, so we’re practicing patience on that front.

We have made a nice upgrade to the panelling around our ports, swapping out the dark, wet, teak veneer for bright white arborite.

On the port side at least 😉 (this is that 80% I was talking about haha but our ports on the port side leaked a LOT so it made sense to prioritize them).

Replacing the panelling around the opening ports on our Sabre 42 CB Sailboat
We’ll call this “before”

Jon dug out the old putty, refilled the area with thickened epoxy and a thin layer of fibreglass, and then rebed the freshly-polished ports. We like shiny 🙂

Rebedding opening ports with thickened epoxy and fibreglass on our Sabre 42 sailboat
“During”

Oh and did I mention rot? We have rot 🙂 A wet, rotting mast step (and stringer) to be specific.

The limber holes (that let water drain through) were not sealed at all on our boat, so the mast step and stringer was totally wet and half rotten.

Replacing the old rotten mast step in our 1989 Sabre 42 CB Sailboat - unfortunately tied to the stringer, so a bigger project than it first seems!
What we found under the fibreglass… rotten yuckiness

Jon being Jon, he’s already replaced our entire mast step, chipping the rotten step out (literally – with a hammer and a chisel and brute doggedness) and replacing it with an entire sheet’s worth of marine plywood, about a gallon of epoxy, and fourteen layers of fibreglass.

This project was NOT on any of our lists, but that’s pretty much expected when you buy an old boat, right?

Cute model for scale

There are so many other little projects to try to share — a new forward vberth hatch, updated LED lighting in the main area, new electronics, etc, etc, etc — but this will have to do for a wrap-up for now.

Here’s to 80% projects and the 20% that will come some day 🙂

LMK


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In the Boatyard with the Baby-Kid and the Chainplates and the Rigging Bits and the Sabre 42 Sailboat Rot (in St Marys, GA) — 1 Comment

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