Doing chores on a rainy day at the boat yard

(click photos to enlarge)

The pier at River Bend Marine Center has no floating slips like we're used to in Southern California, and this isn't likely to be the last place we're confronted with lying against wooden pilings, so we made some "fender boards".  Without fender boards, you must hang your fenders horizontally to span the pilings.  

The Mega Yachts have monster fenders for this, but while Moonshadow's fenders are large, even these big fenders are only about 3 feet end to end, so that doesn't permit much protection if the boat should surge fore and aft on a wake from a passing yacht.   Also, when you're tied to a fixed pier, the tide can slacken your docklines a wee bit so you could wake up to find the hull pressed against one of those nasty pilings.  The solution is to make fender boards.  

Ours are made from five foot long 2x6 pine boards with big holes bored at each end, filed and sanded smooth then protected with bullet proof water sealer.  They hang from lanyards between the piling and a pair of fenders taking the brunt of the wear on the pilings and giving ample  room for the boat to wander forward and aft with the tide, wind or wake.

In an earlier post John was bragging about the new tool chests he bought.  They really are beautiful, but until today, empty.

With Moonshadow safely protected from those nasty pilings, John's next chore was to inventory all of Moonshadow's tools, eliminate the redundant or rusted tools, and squirrel them all away into the new chests.

George was a tool lover and left his complete set aboard Moonshadow.  John also loves his tools and brought everything from San Diego. With the best of both sets of tools to choose from, all nicely organized and within arm's reach, we just can't wait for something to break...

Our prop arrived at the shop in Seattle on Thursday, so we hope to see it back in Florida soon, then we can be on our way north.  

In the meantime, we're shopping for new electronics and instruments, renewing some of the running rigging, checking out all the sails (we haven't had anything up but the main and jib so far),  and looking for a wallpaper hanger.  If the weather improves, we may head over to the Everglades for an air boat ride, then check out the trendy downtown area we passed through aboard Moonshadow on our trip up river to the boatyard.