Before and After.

by Allison

It's only a matter of weeks now before we start to call this old boat "home."  In some ways it feels like we have been working on her forever, and we thought that this day would never come.  But on the other hand, time flew by and I can't believe that we've already accomplished so much!

Let's take a look at some of our before and after shots:

We bought Winbrandt during the winter, and we spent most of those long, cold months sanding and refinishing all of the teak interior.  ALL of it.  To be perfectly honest, once we started... we wished we hadn't.  It took forever.  But, it really does look nice now. Riley built the beautiful new table, complete with an inlaid compass rose, and my mother in law sewed new covers for our cushions.

With just a few pennies, Riley built the new doors himself, and they really changed the whole appearance of the cockpit (not to mention making entering and exiting so much easier).  This is when we finally felt like some of our hard work was starting to make a noticeable difference!  He also cleaned up that side over there with the broken electronics.  He's installed a few others since the picture was taken.

Once the weather started getting a little nicer, Winbrandt got a good cleaning and polishing, a fresh coat of bottom paint and a new boot stripe before going back into the water.

We also replaced the countertop in the galley and replaced all four windows.

And these were (mostly) just the cosmetic changes!  You can read about all of the other projects we tackled (well, the ones that made onto the blog, anyway) under the repairs and restorations tab.

Catching Up.

by Riley

Well folks, it's been a while since I caught you up on the progress. We are getting pretty close to our shove off date. The house is being packed up into boxes and it's starting to feel real. 

I was fortunate enough to acquire an autopilot recently, and was able to install with only one call to tech support. When I was a kid, I always wanted a robot to do my chores for me. IT'S BETTER THAN I THOUGHT! While I do love steering my boat, it sure is nice being able to take a break and eat a sandwich or go... you know.

This past week we took a short, shakedown overnighter. These are always good to give you a sense of what you have to look forward to. Oh, it was so nice. A cool breeze blowing, the sun was shining, but we were in the shade under our new bimini top, with books and magazines to read. When those got boring, I jumped off the side to go for a swim. Did I already say it was nice? 

All good thing must come to an end.

Night fell, and so did the battery levels. Our sailboat had two, 100 amp hour batteries. That should be good enough to run everything we have for a pretty long time. But the thing is, while I have just about fixed or repaired everything on the boat, I crossed my fingers with the battery bank. $$$. I'm frugal, not cheap! So as night came and I turned on the anchor light, I could see on the voltage indicator that something was up... or should I say, down. As I lay in bed looking through the front hatch at the light atop the mast getting dimmer and dimmer, I we had a problem. But hey, no worries! I'll just turn the switch over to the other battery. Haha, it was worse than the first. No lights, no fan, I went back to bed. But, Allison needs her fan. It's 2 am, so I do what I do best. Fix stuff. I put on my head lamp and headed for my tools. Believe it or not, I just so happened to bring along another battery! Actually two. They were free, so I didn't know how good they were. So at 2:30 in the morning I find myself sanding battery cables and turning a wrench while my headlamp is now going dead. "Work faster!" Allison yelled. Sweaty, bleeding and tired, I tightened the last bolt and flip the switch. Done. Crisis averted. Why does it always happen in the middle of the night?

Ok, I made up the part about Allison. 

The next morning all was good in the world.

Kabob Kings.

by Allison

We made a quick trip down to the boat this past weekend, and the main agenda (in my mind) was to finally get some fresh shrimp to cook for dinner!  Riley's list was a little longer, but he indulged me and my need for seafood first.  Really, I don't think he minded too much.  Eventually we are going to have to experiment with something other than kabobs, I know.  But it was entirely too hot and humid this past weekend to try out our oven.  And since Riley is pretty much the grill master, I take every opportunity I can get to hand over some of the dinner reigns.  The shrimp, scallop, pineapple, red pepper, and red onion kabobs were a winning combination.  I foresee many more kabob dinners in our sailing future.

Riley's main priority this trip was installing our table.  We had removed it from the boat months ago while we were refinishing the teak interior.  It was previously a generic, off-white colored laminate, the same as the galley countertops.  We tossed around a few ideas for it, and Riley kept coming back to the idea of finishing it with the same laminate we recovered the counter tops in.  This just didn't sit well with me; the "dining room" table is not supposed to look like a kitchen counter.  My preference was wood.  So, Riley took this idea and ran with it.  We couldn't have just a plain wood table... no, we had to fancy it up a bit.  Fine by me!  He covered the existing table with a thin sheet of mahogany, and stained it to match the rest of the wood interior.  Then, we picked out an inlay.  Now, by this point, this may not surprise you, but Riley had never done an inlay before.  So of course, we picked out the most complicated shape we could find for him to experiment with on our mahogany table.  A compass rose, with many sharp angles, in sycamore and blackwood.  And it turned out perfectly (If you ask me.  If you ask Riley, he will gladly point out all of the flaws).  Then, we covered it with a layer of epoxy.  Also a first time experiment.

My favorite part of the whole table project was when Riley actually brought it to the boat.  We arrived on Friday night, but he waited patiently until late Saturday morning to carry it down to the dock.  I think he was pretty pleased with the number of "oohhs" and "ahhhs" he received along the way.

I oohed and ahhed quite a bit myself.  Who picks up skills this quickly or creates something this nice on their first try??  He's pretty talented, that husband of mine.

A Good Day.

by Riley

I'm lying here in the cabin of my boat after a very satisfying day of care giving. Sailboats are a lot of upkeep, and even more work to bring back after neglect. It can also be a really rewarding experience. Today is what would register as a good day for me and Winbrandt. The old electronics are gone and the new installed. The hull is polished and waxed. We wanted to change the bootstripe at the waterline from a dark blue to largo blue, which matches the canvas on the boat; this task was accomplished also. My friend James was a lot of help. He also showed me how to move the stands that support the boat in order to paint the rest of the bottom. To top it all off, I had some fine Carolina BBQ for dinner. 

Winbrandt is now ready to put back in the water.

The Galley.

by Riley

Updating the galley was not necessary, but it was something Allison and I wanted. The old countertops were pretty worn and stained. So I pulled all the trim off and bought a sheet of laminate and some glue from Lowes for around 60 bucks. Well worth it for the improvement. The pieces of counter that could be easily removed from the boat, I did, and used my cutoff bit in my router to trim the excess laminate around the edges after gluing. The large pieces of counter I had to leave in the boat and precut the new laminate to fit. After spraying the glue I got ready to place the new laminate top on. I was a little nervous because the glue was so sticky I knew I only had one chance to get it lined up precisely. About the time I started to go for it, Allison ask how I learned to do this. I told her, "that's what we're doing." I think it turned out pretty well.

The Doors.

by Riley

You can't judge a boat by it's doors, but they sure make a difference. One of the things I've been wanting was some companionway doors. Most boats have wooden slats that slide into a groove, which can be kinda problematic in my opinion, although they are stronger. Buying the doors would have cost around a thousand dollars, which I didn’t have. So after looking at a few pictures... I decided to make my own. While talking to a good friend about my upcoming project, he tells me he has some rough cut Mahogany in his barn that I could have. What are the odds? I also already had some glass. So the other day I got my tools out and built these... 

The Mahogany is stained to the same color of the oiled teak on the boat. So now I just need to oil and refinish the trim around the doors, then it will match. So instead of spending $1000, I only had the cost of a few hinges and some stain. 

Thrifty sailing.

Replacing leaky boat windows.

by Riley

The other weekend while working on the boat, we tackled replacing the leaky boat windows. They were cracked, foggy and leaked like a sieve. A previous owner had replaced them, but had done so incorrectly, causing them to crack. I fabricated my new ones using polycarbonate plastic. It is stronger than plexiglass, with minimal cost difference. Using a tracing bit and my router, I cut copies of the windows. The hard part was getting all of the old silicone sealant out of the groove that the window fit in. Nothing bonds to silicone, so if there was even any residue left, the new glass would leak. Lucky for me it was my birthday, so Allison couldn't complain about me delegating that task. While she prepped for the new windows, I fixed some busted fiberglass gelcoat around the windows, thanks to my new friend James, who showed me how to mix the gelcoat epoxy. All in all, the windows took about a day and a half but look great, and most importantly, don't leak, allowing the interior to be finished. 

The same weekend, I also installed the speed and depth sensor in the hull. It was kinda scary cutting holes in the bottom of the boat and getting the sensor sealed. I hope it will still float. Will find out soon enough.

Keep Your Boat Afloat.

by Riley

Something I've been doing while the boat is out of the water is replacing anything below the waterline that is broken or might break. Some things that often get overlooked are the hoses that run from the cockpit drains to the thru hulls below the waterline. Before we bought her, I noticed that the drain hoses on Winbrandt were old and dry rotted. Everyday that she sat in the water I worried that one might give up and I would find my boat on the bottom of the Pamlico. A few new hoses and an hour or two of labor is cheap insurance. And there's no dollar sign on peace of mind.

Electrical 101.

by Riley

So, it's time to put my trade skills to work. Being an electrician, I felt more than capable to rewire the boat. The 120volt wiring was unsafe and really needed to be redone. I decided to install a breaker panel, something the boat didn't have before, in order to give it more capabilities. I chose a Blue Sea panel with a polarity indicator. The polarity indicator detects if the dock wiring is backwards for safety purposes. I also replaced the cables with boat wire. The previous DIY owners had used Romex and what appeared to be an extension cord with the ends cut off. Being as there’s water everywhere, I installed GFCI protection. To do so, I had to replace a few of the factory receptacle boxes because they weren't large enough to accommodate the new GFCI receptacles. The time consuming part was tracing out the nonfactory wiring. Everything went pretty well and I made good time on the project. Now, she has an up to date AC system, and I have one less thing to worry about.