More Boat Work – Final Bahamas Prep Projects in Jacksonville

After all the boat work we did in our couple months in Annapolis, you’d think we’d be all caught up. Right? Wrong. Boat work is a constant. The harsh salt water environment we are in 24/7 insures that. The fact that our boat and diesel engine are 39 years old doesn’t help. Previous owners surely have done a lot of maintenance in the past, but they seem to be masters at maintaining the easy to reach, easy to see things. The harder it is to see and get to, the more likely it has never been touched.

So, one task we began tackling while we were in Annapolis was our leaking fresh water tank which we removed. As we stated in our post from that time, we had ordered and had been waiting for our new tank (that we had already paid for!) to be built and shipped out. It never happened. The company, Kracor, and our boat builder, Tartan, gave us the run around for over 2 months, and I finally cancelled the order. This was one of the most frustrating business dealings in which I have ever been involved. We got our money back and vowed to never do business with Kracor or Tartan again.

What to do now? The space didn’t work for any tank that the large plastic tank builders make (like Ronco). The best fit they had was a tank with half the capacity. There were some custom builders that we found, but they were quite expensive. Plus, we’d be back to waiting again. We had been playing with the idea of going to a flexible bladder, but were worried about the fit and also the durability.

In the end, we decided to go for it. Plastic bladders are a small portion of the price of any sort of custom job. They are also available for shipping immediately, and we could finally be done with all the waiting and frustration that had filled the previous two months. We ordered one, had it a couple days later, and went about making the area around the tank as pillow soft and puncture free as possible.

It all worked out in the end, and as I type after a Gulf Stream crossing and a few weeks in the Bahamas….so far, so good.

The other main project was making sure our electrical system was in tip top shape. We had been concerned that some symptoms showed that we had a small current leak. This could drain the batteries faster and also lead to early corrosion of metal parts.

After a bunch of testing, research, and rewiring most of the boat, we gave Holiday a clean bill of electrical health. The rewiring project was one I had been putting off for a long time, and it was also one that I was super glad to have in my rearview mirror.

Of course, there were a ton of other small projects completed in our two months in Jacksonville as well as provisioning for our upcoming crossing to the Bahamas. Then just after Christmas, we were finally ready. We cast off our lines and headed south again knowing that we would soon be to our crossing point. Yay!