Leveled the boat

I guess that might sound funny, considering there aren't any right angles on a boat, but there is a point at which she's level, both fore and aft and side to side. When they moved me to the corner of the yard late last year -- I didn't put her in the water last year, so she's been in this yard for about a year and a half -- they left her with a pretty good list to port and the bow down a few degrees. There's no way to really tell if she's level, but if you walk out about 50 - 100 feet in front, you can easily see that she's listing. There's usually a clinometer on board that measures heel, but I'm not sure I trust mine. It looks like it's been moved.

So, I ended up just using a ball and placed it on various flat surfaces amidships to see if it rolled or not. I also walked out in front and looked at the boat to see how she looked. I think I got her pretty level from side to side -- if she's not level, water will pool and various places and not drain, that's one the the reasons it's important to keep her level on land, especially right now when I'm trying to keep her dry so I can fix the leaks and paint the decks.

As for fore and aft, that was a bit more difficult. I had tried to level her the day after I moved on board, but had so much gear forward in the v-berth, I wasn't able to do it with the adjustable stanchions. Since the blocks under the keel were too far forward, the pivot point would have been too far aft and I would have had to lift the entire boat with the forward stanchions. It's not really that difficult, but with all the weight forward, I was worried I'd put too much strain on the hull. So this morning, I moved a whole bunch of gear to the aft end of the cockpit, including tools, paint, anchors, and pigs (pigs are lead ingots used for ballast, I've got 7 of them -- Bardens took two off the dock, but I figured I had more than I needed and let it go -- they weigh about 20 pounds each). Once I did that, it was pretty easy to lift the bow and I was able to level her in about 30 minutes. I think the bow is probably still a little low; the ball I used to check rested about 6 inches forward of the deck drains on both sides of the coach roof, but I think it's close enough for now. I'd need to adjust the blocks under the keel again to get it any closer. Maybe I'll do that tonight once it cools off.

Right now, it's getting hot, so I've opened up the cover and decided to take a break for lunch and get a few things taken care of online. Seemed like a good time to blog as well. Hope you enjoyed it -- it's a beautiful day here...