Wake up!  Wake up I keep telling myself!  It’s springtime and I need to break out of my winter hibernation-blues.  Time to go to the boat!  Bits and pieces of our next boat projects are arriving on our door step, we’re making plans and lists of things to do, and the snow is finally melting.  Even daylight savings time starts this weekend, so everything is telling me that it’s time to go to the boat and get started on our spring projects!  Time’s a-wasting!  We’re not going to let what happened last year happen again, we deserve more than 2 months of sailing for all of our hard work.  We want to have as much time in the water as possible and it seems like the weather may just cooperate!

First, if you haven’t caught up on our videos, stop what you’re doing and go to this link.  www.youtube.com/c/sailwanderingtoes   While you’re there, please subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss out on any of our adventures!  If you’ve been following along, Great!  Feel free to share them with other family, friends and co-workers in any way you wish.  It’s easy to hit the “Share” button on YouTube and put a copy of it on your Facebook or whatever other program you use to keep in touch with everyone.  We do this for fun and the more people we can share it with the better!  We have made and published several videos over the winter.

Marge had a surgery on her right hand in December, and she’s done a wonderful job putting up with the long recovery time.  But now she’s free of her cast and hand cage and is making progress in getting her range of motion and strength back.  She is happy to be done with the surgeries for a while hopefully now and can focus on getting back to normal (er, extraordinary!).

We really don’t have much to report from over the winter.  We just worked, recovered, made videos from our trips last year, stayed warm and made plans.  Our big boat projects that we are tackling this year are:

• A new refrigeration system that uses less power.
• Solar panels and electrical upgrades to make us energy independent on the boat.
• A new Dodger and Bimini so we can enclose the cockpit and have much better protection from the elements (and bugs!).
• Some Small improvements to the plumbing system.
• New engine mounts (unglamorous but necessary maintenance).
• Larger Propane tank for the grill.
• New cockpit cushions.
• Hopefully a trip to Canada on the boat for a couple of weeks!

At the end of last season, we tore apart almost our entire engine to expose and fix what really was a tiny leak.  In the process we learned a tremendous amount about our diesel engine and now feel much better about the engine situation.  When we got it apart, the first thing to note was that it was absolutely pristine inside.  I’m not sure you could tell the difference between our 25 year old engine and a brand new one.  That really made me feel good about everything.  We learned all of the steps involved in taking it apart and we were able to get all of the necessary tools to do it again if we ever needed to.  Just knowing that she’s perfect on the inside really gives me a sense of peace that she will last us a good long time, and that nothing awkward is going on in there at the moment.  We did video the entire process and will get that edited and out at some point.  I’m sure that it won’t be of much interest to most people, but I want to be able to share the knowledge I’ve gained with other YouTube viewers and people who are hesitant to delve into such a daunting project.

We have already been to the boat and begun our refrigeration system upgrades.  We are optimistic yet that our spring projects won’t take until summer to complete, and we are looking forward to just being at the marina and seeing all of our boating friends again.  I can see the sun shining outside.  It’s winning!  Let’s go outside and play!

David and Marge Back
s/v Wandering Toes