Category: Maintenance

Spadefoot – back from the hospital

May 16, 2017

Just 2.5 weeks until the start of Bermuda 1-2 and Spadefoot is back from the hospital.  The last race of Spring Series was not a good time for the da’foot.   But thanks to an incredibly quick turnaround from Fred Lindsey at lindseymarine.com down in Canyon Lake, Spadefoot is healed and ready to go racing. About

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Spadefoot 2.0, err… 4.0

October 30, 2016

One of the fun things about owning a one-off custom boat is that you are free to make changes whenever it seems like a good idea.  There are no “rules” to follow.  In the past 16 years Spadefoot has gone through a number of changes.  When first launched in 2000, Spadefoot (fka After Math) had

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600 miles, and we are still in Austin

May 15, 2016

Over the last 10 days we’ve made 10 trips to Austin Yacht Club.  AYC is 30 miles from our house, so that is 600 miles.  Oof.  That’s a lot of time sitting in the car/truck. The good news is that we absolutely killed it.  Boat hauled, emergency rudder installed, bottom stripped, bottom painted, bottom sanded,

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Yeah, it’s got a Hemi!

March 20, 2016

We’ve had many great weekends for sailing and racing this winter, but this week and next have been reserved for off the water projects to get Spadefoot ready for Pacific Cup in July.  First up, was a big one.  We’ve had Spadefoot for 1.5 years and the boat came with a nice trailer, but up

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On the road again…

April 22, 2014

Shearwater was loaded on a truck today (US Boat Haulers), bound for San Francisco Bay.  With luck she will be in Richmond by Friday and get her first taste of the Pacific Ocean. Preparing for the transport went amazingly well.  On Thursday we started prepping the rig for removal.  Boom off and halyards pulled back

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Update – Getting settled in Seabrook

September 3, 2013

Shearwater has been at the Seabrook Shipyard off Galveston Bay for almost 2 months now.  Even though she is still 3 hours away, that is close enough that we are making regular trips to work on projects and actually do some daysailing.  Other than the stifling heat and humidity (we bought a portable LG AC

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Unwired

January 2, 2013

Spending a few days on the boat affords us time to start poking around in cubby holes…and tracing wires that are not labeled…and pulling those wires out to find….they are not attached to anything! Back in the spring, we installed new NKE instrumentation and autopilot on Shearwater – the installation went reasonably well, although there

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Alternator Chronicles – A Happy Ending

August 29, 2012

So you recall a few weeks ago we “blew up our alternator” while trying to do diagnostics on a suspected charging problem.  That was a big bummer, requiring ordering a new alternator and regulator, shipping from the West Coast of the United States, and import duties into Spain.  Ouch, ouch, and ouch again. Well, this

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Alternator Chronicles

August 14, 2012

When things go wrong on a boat they can go very wrong. It pains me a little that despite owning a sailboat and being a lover of the sailing aspect of owning a sailboat, since taking ownership of Shearwater, most of our effort, time, frustration, and a great deal of our funds have gone to

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Back in the saddle again…

June 21, 2012

The Travel lift saddle that is.  Yesterday was launch day again and hopefully we’ll be in the water for a long time this time.  Chris arrived in Philadelphia on Monday, collected all of our goodies from her Mom’s in New Jersey and moved onto the boat Tuesday morning. It’s only been 2.5 days, but the

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