We are back in our slip at Brisbane with almost 5 hours on the Beta. Of course I forgot the camera to document the inaugural motor home over the weekend. The weather was perfect, the new motor purred the whole way and it feels a little surreal to have Pisces back at our slip already. The new engine is so quiet that when I am standing up at the bow I can't hear it running. The galley doesn't shudder continually, making cooking much more comfortable, and the noise level below decks is so much more quiet.
The entire repower took 2 weeks to the day--it is slightly unbelievable to have the project that was the most anxiety producing be over so quickly. To have an engine that I trust in and rely upon is a whole new feeling. One I'm looking forward to getting used to.
-julia

I drove to work today with a car load of misc. boat supplies, clothes, drop cloths (ie old sheets) reference books and a computer in anticipation of the engine rebuild. Ethan called yesterday and said he'd picked our engine up from SFO, and I imagined it sitting in his shop all clean and shiny, waiting to go into Pisces.

It feels slightly surreal, sitting here at work talking about work-y things, knowing that in a few hours we'll be heading towards that shiny new engine in Sausalito. Over the next few weeks I feel like we'll be living a double life. Working on the engine as much as we can, and showing up to work trying to hide the engine grease and grime during the day. What will Pisces(and we!) look like when it's all finished? I'll take lots of pictures and post as often as I can.

Well, we've been very busy with work and projects, so this is just a quick update.

Boom Gallows:
The original boom gallows cross beam was laminated, and badly needed some attention (varnish, fix delaminating spots, etc.). We took this off, spent about a week of evenings sanding it, then decided the extent of the delamination was such that we would need to pull it completely apart and relaminate it....well...we pulled it apart without too much trouble...

Plan B: replace with a solid piece of wood. Quick trip to MacBeath's revealed that the price of a piece of teak sufficient to do the job would roughly equal the cost of a new sail, so mahogany it is!

The other funny thing about this is that the bronze brackets which hold the boom gallows are exactly 2" across. Now, if you've ever bought lumber you'll know that an 8/4 piece of wood (rough sawn to 2") is only 1 3/4" when planed down. So we would have to find a thicker piece, and plane it down significantly just to get the extra 1/4" of thickness. Instead of doing this we went with an 8/4 piece and have come up with a plan to use small pieces of teak as trim on the gallows. I think it's going to look really nice, we'll varnish the mahogany and leave the teak natural. We'll post photos as soon as possible (which may be a while because...)

Repower:
Next week we're repowering. We've mapped out the electrical system, have a rough plan on how we're going to cut away the necessary cabinetry, and we've got a few days off from work. It's going to be quite a process, and it will probably be all quiet on the blog front until we've come out the other end.