After a few nights sleeping away from the boat (our first since we left Michigan in September), we were excited to get back to our own bed. Alaya was ready for us to be back too. She was filthy on the outside (some birds had noticed our brief absence and decided Alaya made for a great bathroom) and she was a mess on the inside (thanks to our Costco shopping trip).
Luckily for us, we were allowed to extend our mooring ball reservation for another week, so we didn’t have to move Alaya right away. We spent the next week putting her back together and working on our respective projects.
What projects are we working on these days?
In early December, I got my first freelance assignment. My task was to edit the navigation paragraphs throughout Waterway Guides’ Great Lakes Volume 1 Book. Waterway Guides are an awesome series of guidebooks for recreational boaters that we have been using throughout our travels. Earlier in the fall, I applied to be an on-the-water editor with them and this was my first project. I had 10 chapters to edit by mid-January!
I started work on the edits in December as we were traveling down the ICW but I still had a lot of work to do while we were in St. Augustine. I spent most days camped out in the marina’s lounge where there was comfortable furniture and fast Wi-Fi. While it took a lot of time, I really enjoyed the work. It was really fun to revisit parts of the Great Lakes and Erie Canal that we traveled this summer and learn about new areas that we would like to explore in the future (have you ever heard of a boat railway?! Check it out).
While I edited, Lucas undertook some major boat projects. First, he rebuilt and rewired our navigation lights that are mounted on the bow and stern of the boat. They had been acting up during our last overnight ocean passage and needed to be addressed before we traveled at night again. He also started the plumbing for our watermaker. Plumbing for a house is tricky enough, but plumbing a complex marine system with multiple filters and a new pump within the small confines of a boat is not a lot of fun. He mounted all the filters and pumps and started plumbing them all together before he had to order more parts.
While waiting for the watermaker parts, Lucas started down an alternator rabbit hole trying to figure out why our alternator wasn’t charging our batteries as quickly as it should, per the specs. For the non-mechanics, myself included, an alternator is a device connected to Pierre, our diesel engine, that uses the engine’s power to charge our batteries. When we are not plugged into shore power at a dock, the alternator and our solar panels are the only ways to charge our house batteries, which run nearly every system on our boat…so an important piece of equipment. This project was a literal journey. One day Lucas walked about six miles all over town visiting an alternator shop, hardware store, the marina, a dinghy trip to the boat, a second-hand boat store and then back to the alternator shop. He ordered a rebuild kit online, rebuilt the alternator with just a bit of drama (which led to the six mile walk mentioned above), installed it back on the engine and then fired it up. After all that work, it had the same freaking output as before…Needless to say, Lucas needed a break from that project for a while. We’ll come back to the alternator topic in a later post.
This was my first time trying to work while living on a boat and it was way more challenging than I expected. I thought it would be pretty simple to sit down at a computer for eight hours a day like I used to do when I was working. Turns out, just living on a boat takes a lot of time. It was harder than I expected to balance my boat life and my editing life. After living and working together in a small space for so long, it was also weird for Lucas and I to be working on different projects in different physical locations. It totally messed with our rhythm. It took us a while to figure out how to live with this new, temporary, set-up. We learned a lot about what works for us and what doesn’t during this time. We hope to carry these lessons with us if we get the opportunity for freelance work in the future.
While working on our projects, we had to ride out some nasty weather. Everyone keeps telling us how un-Florida-like the weather has been this winter. Thank goodness we installed a diesel heater before we left Michigan, we used it a lot in St. Augustine. In between cold spells, we did have a few warm days and it was almost always sunny. At the end of the day, we still haven’t seen any snow, so we’re good.
Our first few weeks of 2024 wasn’t all work and no play. We fit in a few fun activities, including watching a New Years Eve fireworks show from our cockpit, exploring downtown with some new friends and watching the University of Michigan win the National Football Championship. What a time to be a Michigander!
After three great but challenging weeks in St. Augustine, we were ready to move again. Next stop for Alaya? We’re headed to Florida’s Space Coast – Cape Canaveral!
