It's a boat!

Our tree.

First output from the oven.

Pete, Carol, Bev and Mike at Christmas dinner.

Yes, folks, Queequeg is once again a boat.
We launched her almost two weeks ago and have been busy moving all our gear from Walkure to Queequeg. It's a long and difficult chore and not quite complete. It is amazing how much stuff we had accumulated on that little boat!
When we launched, we noted that the bilge pump ran every few minutes. A leak! It turned out to be the speedometer transducer that was never properly bedded. Someone had used plumbers putty to bed an underwater fitting. We had to haul out (briefly), pull the fitting, clean it and re-bed it. Now we're dry. Whew! dodged a bullet again.
Last Wednesday (my birthday) Bev had to work, so our friends Carol and Peter from Crazy Cat served as crew for the delivery cruise. The wind was just about non-existent so we motored all the way. The boat did 5.5 knots on 2,000 rpm from the old Yanmar diesel. This is way better performance than the previous owner had claimed. I think changing the cutlass bearing made a big difference.
The diesel has been running a bit hot, so I changed out the impeller on the fresh water pump and now she runs cool as a cucumber.
It's a bit of an adjustment settling in to this big boat. We've not quite got all our systems and routines ironed out, but we are making progress. Case in point is the cake Bev made for my birthday (a couple of days late, but that was unavoidable.) With a little help from me getting the oven working, we managed to turn out a beautiful looking, great smelling and even better tasting Pineapple upside-down cake, complete with maraschino cherries!
Yesterday, in between calls to family for holiday wishes, we went to the club house for a fantastic Christmas dinner. Richard Tanner, the harbor master, and his wife put on a huge spread for all the boaters in the harbor. Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, the whole shootin' match. Thanks, Richard!
Right now we're hunkered down waiting out the latest cold front. The wind is howling outside, about 25 knots or so and the whole harbor is white caps. We had planned to go to the movies, but a dinghy ride today is a risk to life and limb and a movie just isn't worth the risk. So, with the solar panels providing the electrical juice, we're sitting here updating the blog.

Sporting new bottom paint, Queequeg goes flying!

Kissing the water.

A boat, at last!

A champagne toast to a successful lanuch!

More progress

We're almost ready to launch.
The bottom has been sanded, the new cutlass bearing installed, new zinc put on the shaft, etc. We're just waiting for a fresh coat of bottom paint and..."SPLASH!"
The interior repairs are going well. The new floor is installed in the aft stateroom, the galley and the "office" (nav station.)
Bev has painted the interior of all 16 drawers. The unfinished wood was just too stained to leave as is, and we just couldn't see ourselves putting our clothing and other items in them. She also painted the lower portions of the galley. This will brighten the space and save us a lot of refinishing. While she had the paint going, she painted the fold-away seat in the office.
We installed a temporary floor in the salon (dining room.) The sub floor there is very damaged and will have to be completely rebuilt. That will take a lot of time, so it will have to wait. There are more pressing projects, most especially tracking down and stopping several leaks on deck and around the port lights. There's still some rewiring that needs to be done, etc. So we will have to put up with a plain plywood floor in the salon for a while. The forward stateroom/V-Berth has become a lumber yard, storing all of our construction materials. Bev and I will sleep in the aft stateroom until repairs are farther along.
So now, without further ado, here are some much awaited photos of the progress so far.

New galley floor

More new galley floor

Nav station floor (note fresh paint on seat frame.)

New stateroom floor

The galley "freshened"

The prop polished, new bearing and zinc installed.

Bottom sanded and ready for paint.

Progress

Well I finally remembered to bring the camera one day this week, so here are a couple of pictures.
So far, we've done a lot of cleaning and some rewiring, so there's not a lot to see in terms of pictures. We've torn out the old floor from the companionway to the end of the galley. We've built the new floor in the aft stateroom and rebuilt the subfloor in the galley. Bev has been doing some painting in the galley, and I've installed some beadboard to replace the old plywood around the deadlights. The beadboard around all the windows will be painted "Country Dairy," an off-white color that closely matches the color of the fiberglass portions of the interior.
By the end of this week, the aft stateroom and the galley will be done. This will give us enough "living room" to start moving on board.

New subfloor in aft statroom

Beadboard roughed in above galley

Our current plan is to swap boats sometime next week. We'll put "Walkure" on the hard where Queequeg is now and launch Queequeg. The folks at the marina say we can raft the two boats together for a few days while we move stuff. To minimize clutter on Queequeg, some "stuff" will stay on Walkure. It will be a good "triage" experience to find what we really need and what we can do without.