Repairs and Upgrades

Buying a boat is not unlike buying a home.  You look at a ton of prospects and when you find one you like you make a formal offer with subjects.  One of those subjects is always the marine survey - the boating equivalent of a home inspection.  Our inspector was very thorough and reported a few things we didn't know about the boat.  Fortunately there was nothing serious but the items he noted factored into our negotiations.

Now that we've got Ge Mara home we can turn our attention to addressing these things.  First, the lifelines are worn and corroded in places.  This is a must fix for safety's sake.  Interestingly, the white plastic that covers the cable is actually detrimental as it holds water inside and speeds the deterioration of the lifeline.  The riggers who bid on re-doing the lifelines advised against using that style of cable.  We have a guy coming this week to get that job done.

The only other immediate repair is the hot water heater.  It actually works great but the inspector said it is badly corroded on the bottom and could spring a leak at any time.

Then there's the optional upgrades.  It goes without saying that the sky is the limit on these.  Cushions for the cockpit, upgraded prop, an electric windlass (to raise and lower the anchor), and on it goes.  For the most part these will have to wait while we focus on the important things.  We did make a few minor optional purchases though.

When we pulled up to our new slip in Vancouver for the first time we discovered that the cement dock they use sits much lower in the water than traditional wooden docks.  As a result it's an uncomfortably big jump from the boat to the dock and visa-versa.  I knew we'd be having many visitors to the boat very soon so rather than risk an injury we bought a plastic dock stair from West Marine.

Another item we splurged on is an upgraded stereo.  The boat came equipped with an AM/FM CD stereo but unfortunately it has no provision for playing music from an I-Phone.  These days virtually all of our music is stored and listened to that way and the ability to use one will give us access to a much wider selection of music without the need to store piles of CD's.

We could have used an accessory that transmits music from the I-Phone to the FM band of the stereo but a brand new one with a plug for the I-Phone/I-Pod is actually quite inexpensive so we went for it.  I took the new unit back to the boat to see if I could replace it myself.  This was probably not the best idea.  I managed to get the old one disconnected but I couldn't make sense of the wiring so I was unable to connect the new one.  So now we have nothing until I get someone down to finish the job.  I suppose there is goodness in this insofar as I've now decided not to attempt replacing the hot water heater myself.  No doubt my lack of experience could have much worse consequences with that project.