A never-ending boat project list

Other than being a great seaworthy boat, another main reason that Nick and I bought Borealis is that she's in very good condition and shows only slight wear for her age and despite having been cruised extensively (from Maine to South America and back).

While in the past we've spent wintertime away from our boat, that's not the case this year with a new (to us) boat, since we came away from our marine survey (like a home inspection) with a long list of to-do projects. Thankfully, we have a few years of boat ownership experience under our belts, and we both enjoy tinkering on boat projects. While some projects are larger and will be more costly (we've already gotten estimates from four contractors on different repairs or upgrades), we've been able to tackle and make headway on many other projects.


We started with some easy cleaning, and now with the weather warming here in D.C., we've started to move on to some slightly more involved projects on our list.

Our first order of business was getting the boat shrink wrapped and covered for the winter; since we didn't buy the boat until mid-December, we were already a month or so behind on this since wrapping protects it from the elements and keeps it drier and cleaner during the winter months.

The second thing we did was completely empty the boat of sails, lines, spare parts and safety equipment and brought everything home, which took two trips with our car! So. much. stuff. A boat is like a mini apartment with all the linens, galleyware,  and maintenance and safety equipment, and combined with the items we took off of our old boat, we now have multiple rooms in our house filled to the brim with boat stuff.

For the first few weeks we spent our time at home deep cleaning all the lines, curtains, canvas and cushions. Borealis has been barely used in the past 18 months and she showed a bit of neglect, but thankfully nearly everything is salvageable and has cleaned up nicely.

Once everything at home was cleaned we headed back to the boat, where we vacuumed and wiped every surface and inside cabinets from the bow to the stern. I even picked up this portable carpet cleaner (which I highly recommend since we've now used it for awhile) and deep cleaned the cushions throughout the boat...it was amazing (and gross) how much dirt we pulled out of the heavily used cushions in the main salon area.

From there we've moved on to selling some outdated equipment (see ya, satellite phone and Epirbs), replacing the recalled fire extinguishers, and converting all of our halogen lightbulbs to LEDs (we can now run all of the boat's lights using less power than one of the old halogen lightbulbs), and making the boat feel a little more like ours.

We removed the old tarnished brass Weems & Plath lantern and (too large) clock/ barometer and replaced them with a timeless mirror (to cover the leftover holes) and a modern silver clock and barometer to match the rest of the fixtures. 

This past weekend we moved on to some slightly more involved projects: removing and rebedding the exterior cleats that hold lines (or ropes) to the boat, recaulking areas of the teak deck, polishing and replacing the seacocks (or valves) that allow water into and out of the boat, and sourcing parts.

Our European boat and the darn metric vs. imperial system makes sourcing metric bolts and tools a challenge

While we still have a long list of projects we want to tackle before we launch the boat into the water in late spring, we definitely feel good about the progress we've made.