
Maintenance day in Marblehead
On the 24th, we first and foremost had boat stuff to do. Projects, cleaning, the works.
Patrick and Cecelia teamed up to check out the steering and the rudder. (Our autopilot was making some noise on our passage–always important to research such things!) First, though, Cecelia helped reorganize the green toolkit, which had gotten opened up upside down.



Then they got to work. They both fit comfortably down in the starboard aft lazarette…good to know if I ever need to stow them somewhere, haha. Patrick tightened the upper rudder bearing, which seems to have curtailed the noise. We still have some more investigation and work to do, but hooray (for now?) for sometimes simple solutions!
They also switched out our dinghy painter for a new one, after making sure the line we bought for it did actually float.

Patrick had replaced parts in two of our clutches the day before, and it was a two person job to get the bolts underneath the organizer tightened, so we tackled that next. I was up top holding a socket carefully stuck through the clutch to provide resistance for the bolt tightening Patrick was doing inside Cecelia’s cabin ceiling (directly under this spot). Then the lines had to get fed back through, which I took care of as well. Very exciting to have new clutches here–they had been usable but kept getting annoyingly stuck, and definitely needed to be fixed!

I also did some cleaning of our heads, floors, and rugs. Not terribly exciting stuff, but necessary! I try to spread the tasks out and clean a few things at a time, out so all parts of the interior are reasonably clean at all times. I love Method’s pink grapefruit cleaner; it’s great on all surfaces. For our rugs (we have two long ones in the salon and the master cabin, and one short rug under the companionway stairs, I take them out and beat them off the side of the boat, and then use a stiff bristle brush to get any remaining stuff off of them. Floors get a sweep with our handheld brush and dustpan.



We eventually ventured into town to try to source a couple of boat parts, and to pick up some snacks. I got a few pictures while we were out. The keg delivery crane situation was amazing.



That afternoon Kirsten and Ben decided to come by for cocktail hour, and we were so happy to have them! Fezz came too, and was perfectly content to chill in the cockpit. Excellent boat dog. π Cecelia even helped me with the cheese plate, having learned from Waffles and Mochi on PBS that a cheese plate should have one hard, one soft, and one surprising cheese. It worked out well!


We said farewell to them as dinnertime approached. (Until next time, friends!)
We had plans to leave the next day and take a short trip to Quincy, MA to meet some friends, but the weather had other ideas. After waking up overnight to lots of rain and high winds, we decided we’d just stick around in Marblehead to sit out the less-than-desirable weather on the 25th. Not much happened that day; we took an Uber back and forth to Market Basket to stock up on groceries, and had lunch at EYC. The view was decidedly more soggy than in the days prior!

We looked forward to it clearing up on the 26th for a longer (but less wet!) trek down the coast to Plymouth.
**Just a quick admin note: I’ve updated the All the Sunsets page for the first time in over a month (sorry!), and Cecelia recently wrote a Piglet Page update, too…go check them out!**