Happy blog day, Mentally Sailing pals!
This weekend, while at a bridal shower, I was told that I make “everything sound so fun” on the blog. This comment came right after I said how I had been scrubbing mold to clean up all of the nooks and crannies on the inside of the boat and just how gross it all was. And the truth is, I am a pretty positive person when it comes to this blog, but mainly because of all of the negative things we go through or try to do ourselves, it’s all worth it once we get it done. The work is almost always an instant gratification; like sanding the wood and then varnishing and it being so shiny and sleek, or scrubbing mold in the bathroom and it immediately looking white and 100x better, or putting teak oil on the wood that had been sitting around all winter. So, maybe I am downplaying the work vs. play ratio, but every bit of work we do allows us to do the things we enjoy. Plus, it’s much more fun to write about the fun stuff than the hard work we put in!
With that being said, we are going to talk a little bit more about work this time, specifically changing our oil.
I’ve been cleaning the boat the last week and trying to make it look a bit more livable. This is its first big deep clean, and the first outside scrub this season. It looks SO much better than it did when we first got back from our road trip only a short month ago. The only thing we really had to do before we could take her out was to change the oil.
Now, this was the first time Steve had done this… EVER. We had already watched a YouTube video a few weeks back about how to do it, we read the owner’s manual to make sure we got the right weight oil and filter. We were determined to do it last Wednesday so that we could take it out for a sail on Sunday, but it didn’t happen that way. We thought we’d find what we needed at the AutoZone down the road, but no. So it got pushed to another day. Thursday, as I was cleaning the boat, there was a small white cardboard box that I had no idea what it was. Typically, we have a few things that we will need for a later fix or project just laying upfront on one of the shelves so that we remember where it is. Well, I opened the box and boom! There was our oil filter that Steve couldn’t find the day before! Clearly the whole “put it somewhere so we remember it” idea didn’t work so well. Anyway, the next day we grabbed some oil from the marina store, got the filter opened and ready, and began to change our oil! Getting the oil out wasn’t the biggest deal, although we learned we needed to puncture it higher up so that the drippings didn’t land on another part of the engine. Pumping the oil out, puncturing the filter, removing the filter, and reattaching the new filter all went relatively fine. The issue came when we needed to put the new oil in. The intake for the oil was in quite a precarious position to pour something in. Our funnel was too big, so I went to the hardware store to get a smaller one, thus prolonging our project time. We managed to fit the new and smaller funnel in the pump out tube, which we used to get the old oil out, and then put the other end of the tube in the oil in-take. We fastened the funnel to the wood above the engine so we didn’t have to hold it or worry about spilling it as the oil drained in. It was a messy job, but we were getting it done. After this, all was well, except for the fact that we put too little in (we put 1 quart and needed 1.5 quarts), so we did that on Sunday before our sail. We also did not have very much oil at all in our engine, so we’re very happy to have new oil and a new filter too! On Sunday, the boat started up really quick compared to how it had been before the oil change. Needless to say, we are very happy with our completed project.
We had plans to have no plans on Sunday, so everything that we’d thought about doing was a “if we feel like it” type of adventure. We did, however, decide to go sailing, and boy am I glad we did. It was a beautiful day, we put the mainsail up, I actually steered us away from the dock and into the creek (which is typically Steve’s area of expertise), and we got to spend some much needed time on the water. We’re getting pretty excited to have more evening and weekend sails as the weather is warming up and the water is too.
Overall, I’m really excited about all of the progress we’ve been making with our to-do list. I scrubbed the topside of the boat today, which means it can be prepped with tape and sanding so that I can do some varnishing soon! We’ve got new portholes to put in, things to move back on the boat (like our fridge/freezer/cooler), and many many more things on the list. I’ve already left a few things of mine on the boat so that when we’re there I can have a change of clothes or a bathing suit, so it’s starting to feel like home again and I am so glad.
I hope this next week treats you well and we’ll see you next Tuesday!
Cheers!
Skye
Mentally Sailing 