What no blogs this year! So this is a year end review.

Whew just made it for the year !!!!! I cant believe I haven't made a blog post in a year. Well I have been busy this year so I guess this one will be the year end wrap up.

Lets see.... what happened this past year.... hummmm ugh hmmmm oh yeah....

I RETIRED !

After working for Continental/United Airlines for 30 years I retired.

30 years at Continental/United Airlines
7 years at Houston Hobby airport and 23 years at Houston Intercontinental Airport
All as an avionics technician.
The plaque is cool! it's etched on an aircraft window.

Party time!!!

Wow had a great retirement party with good friends .

 It's was a blast! Thanks everyone

ok hmmmm what else.. oh, Donna and I went to a Metallica concert. Rocking out man!!

Metallica opening the show

Took the kids and grand kids out on Galveston bay for some swimming and kayaking around Redfish Island

Sarah and Dustin and Mac

We made our own little Oasis on the dock to cool off from the summer heat

We took m/v Better Days shown above to Kemah Boardwalk Marina for the 4th of July week and enjoyed the pool and fireworks every night from the back of the boat,

BOAT WORK

In the middle of all that fun we did lots of boat work and projects. My boat Exodus got neglected most of this year since I was working on my brothers boat m/v Better Days. The sliding glass door kept jumping the tracks and hanging up so we took it apart and found the floor board under the door had lots of rot and damage so we had to had to rip it all out and rebuild it.

Here is a little video of the tear-out and rebuild of the door sill plate.

 

New door sill installed all fiberglassed in and gel coated. its better than new much stronger and well braced. Dallas jumped up and down on it and it doesn't move. 

Exodus Boat Work

Not a lot got done on Exodus but we did manage to get the forward upper deck painted.

BEFORE PAINT

AFTER PAINT

Still a lot more to go. We end up waiting for the right weather to paint it requires low humidity and temps above 60 degrees which is hard to do on the water in the winter. 

New MODS 

I have made a couple of modifications over the original boat while waiting to paint. I intend to remove all the teak wood on deck and replace it with stainless steel. All the handrails around the deck will be stainless steel. This presented a problem on the aft deck with the sliding hatch. The rails the hatch would slide back on were teak wood and the wood was in very poor condition. I considered making some fiberglass rails but eventually decided to eliminate the rails completely. I decided to make the hatch a pop up hatch with hinges and gas struts. I did a little study and engineering to get the gas struts in the proper place to hold up the hatch and also hold down the hatch when closed. It works really cool and the struts are 40lbs of pressure each so the winds wont blow it around.   

 

New Access Hatches

I also added some access hatches in the cockpit. There is a bunch of unused space above the fuel tanks but no way to get in there so I put two new hatch doors in the cockpit to get at that space. I will build some shelves over the tanks and it will be a great storage area for shore power cords and other stuff.

We have done a couple things to the interior like a new seafrost ice box unit with digital control, We added two yes 2 queen size memory foam mattress to the aft cabin that are 10 inches thick but what a job cutting them to fit the curves at the back of the boat.. Its a wonderfully comfortable bed where I can lay there and look out the aft window. But for now the interior will be left alone so we can concentrate on the exterior and jobs that must get done before we leave for the islands. Most of the interior stuff can be done at anchor off some beautiful island. 

Thats a wrap up of most of the 2017 year.  I will start posting more blogs and videos in 2018 since that should be our final year in refit mode in the marina.

We are shooting for a Christmas departure in 2018. All the big jobs should be done by then and just cosmetic and making the boat pretty will be left and that can be done in a pretty place down south somewhere.