Sometimes boat projects are big; sometimes they’re small. Sometimes they’re planned; sometimes they’re not. So, this morning included a small unplanned project and a larger planned one. When Maureen got up to start the engine and turn on the inverter to make coffee, the alarm on the inverter sounded telling us that it was not receiving enough power. That was Gale’s signal to get out of bed and investigate. After reviewing a few possible causes, he ended up pulling the inverter out of the cabinet and checking the connections. It was another case of things coming “undone.” We’re always discovering places where stuff “jiggles” loose due to the boat vibrations and today added another item to the list of connections, screws, fittings, etc., that need to be checked and tightened periodically.
Our larger planned project was to pull the mattress out of the master stateroom and fit our new condensation preventer to that space before replacing the mattress. Well, you know how remodeling projects generally go . . . one thing begets another and another – that’s a little like how we felt with the mattress project. Lately we had been noticing that the fitted mattress pad and sheet were becoming quite wet along the wall. We hadn’t had any rain, so the only other possibility was condensation. Back in June when our friends from Toronto, Ken and Nancy, visited us in Peterborough, Ontario, Maureen asked Nancy about preventing moisture and mildew problems on the boat. Among other things, Nancy suggested the condensation mat for under the mattress and sent us a link to the site where they purchased theirs. Today when we pulled the mattress out, we set it on its side in the companion way. It wasn’t long before we were noticing small puddles on the floor! Gravity was pulling the moisture out of the foam pad in a big way! We ended up unzipping the mattress cover over the foam pad so we could remove it and hang it out to dry. The foam pad had to be aired out as well. In addition, we could see that there were a few spots on the bottom side of the pad where mildew was beginning to form. That had to be cleaned and left to dry outside. Of course, the sheets and mattress pad had to be laundered. And since Lucy had snuck up on the bed while we were out the night of her “accident,” the summer quilt on the bed had a lot of blood on it and needed laundering, as well.
Maureen spent the afternoon doing laundry. Gale ran errands all day out in the cold weather. He did a lot of walking but didn’t feel like he got much done. Towards evening, we called Karl and Jennifer Langhart, our friends from Mason City who purchased our old Catalina sailboat in 2008. We had been keeping in touch and knew that they were vacationing with their children in Naples. We had offered to take them sailing whenever they found themselves near our location so we hoped to be able to get them out on Blue Heron this week. As it turned out, Monday was going to be the best day for them so we told them how to find us and looked forward to meeting up with them at 1 pm tomorrow.
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