Freeze Warning

Today was really nice, but there's a freeze warning tonight. Although I got a lot done today, I didn't get to the portholes yet, so I hope it won't get too cold in the cabin tonight.

The forecast for the next few days is for colder weather, but it was sunny this morning with a high this afternoon in the upper 50's, so I took advantage of it and decided to try to finish the toerails. I pulled up the cover on the starboard side and transom. epoxied the 3' section of split toerail on the starboard side near the transom, and finished caulking most of the outboard edge of the starboard toerail up to about 5' from the transom.

I still need to fix one more small section on the starboard toerail just forward of the 3' section I fixed this morning, but that's all that's left on the side of the boat. The other side is completely done, however, I still need to fix a 6" section on the transom right at the port side corner. I would have fixed all three this morning, but didn't have enough clamps, so I did the big section first. I should be able to do the other two at the same time.

By the time I finished all of that, it was already after 1530, and I didn't think I'd be able to make much headway on the handrails or portholes, so I decided to do a few other warm weather tasks. First, I rerouted the manual bilge pump hose, then I reinstalled the engine exhaust hose. The exhaust hose had originally run through the port side cockpit locker along the hull. I didn't like that, so I rotated the elbow on the transom thru-hull straight up, used that to make the anti-siphon loop, and ran it forward directly toward the muffler. I had to cut 3' off to make it fit, but now it's nice and neat and doesn't take up a lot of space in the locker.

I also started cleaning out the forecastle. I moved the genoa and mainsail onto the foredeck, and all the other sails into the bottom of the port cockpit locker. Next, I'll move all the halyards and other lines onto the foredeck and clear out the chain locker. I need to pull out all the chain and anchor rode and get it ready to use, including adding ribbons to mark periodic lengths. This is needed to make sure you let out enough rode when anchoring, normally at least 5:1, e.g., 50' of rode for 10' of depth. Without the some sort of marking on the chain, or rode, it's impossible to know how much you've let out.

Zoe watch:

It's Halloween, but we're already back on board listening to the ballgame. Zoe's a White Sox fan, so she dressed up as Shoeless Joe Jackson -- all black, white socks on her fore paws, black socks on her rear paws, and no shoes. I'm her bat boy.