When a man takes that last step off of the dock, and onto his yacht, he changes.
Not only does he change on the inside, but he changes on the outside as well.
It doesn’t matter how big the yacht is, it only matters that he is Master and Commander of all he surveys. His chest swells, his muscles tense and his vocabulary changes with the introduction of long lost words like yardarm, and hawsepipe, and fathoms.
He gets the 1000 yard stare in his eyes. You know he has been there. He has survived horrors on the high seas, the kind of which fill the terrors of your dreams.
His quiet confidence strikes both fear and calm, all at the same time, and most women grow weak in the knee around such power.
If he happens to catch a glimpse of a reflection in perhaps the black death called a Great White’s eye, the picture he sees is very much like the one I now share below.
Of course, there are always 2 sides to every tail, and his greatest fan of all, his wife, has a much different perspective!
Holy crap there is a lot of work in renovating a kitchen! Now I understand why kitchen reno’s are so expensive! The galley on Akupara is gigantic compareds to a lot of boats, but miniscule as compared to a home kitchen, and yet the amount of work feels the same!
Epoxy coating
So far I have placed and removed the 2 countertops at least 10 times, I have placed and removed the cupboard panel at least 10 times. I have gutted the shelf, built a new one, sanded, ground, painted and epoxied, and we are still not complete!
Laying out the pattern
Dry fitting
Last weekend we took the plunge and started installing white subway tile as a backsplash both behind the sink and behind the fridge/freezer. I have never done tiling in any way shape or form but thanks to the internet, home reno shows, and advice from my neighbour, who also loaned me his tile tools, I think I managed to do a decent job.
not too shabby
This weekend we are going to attack the grouting. Hopefully it will work out ok and hopefully I have watched enough youtube to do it properly.
I am spending a little extra time on the galley. I really want to make sure that it is “perfect” for the Admiral. I don’t mean that in any condescending or sexist way, I truly want her to be happy there. And to back up my claim of not trying to be ignorant, she has said the exact same thing to me. She wants it to be “perfect” for her as well. As she says, if it meets all of her needs, and she enjoys being in the space, she will use it. If it is a hole, she won’t. Makes perfect sense to me. I make her the best galley I possibly can, she enjoys it and spends lots of time in there, she does lots of cooking and baking, and I get fat! It’s a win win situation 🙂 ok I fell off the puritan wagon didn’t I 🙂
Just needs the grout
The galley in Akupara as I said above is a really big galley for a 42 foot boat in my opinion. It is located midships as close to the center of motion as possible. It is narrow for and aft which makes for a safe workspace while underway, the list goes on and on. But. It also has its drawbacks. You need to lean over the top of the stove to get into the cupboards. There is a gigantic bottomless pit underneath the counter beside the stove that again you have to twist and contort over half of the stove to access. It only has 3 small drawers, 1 drop down compartment which is half used by the sink, 2 slightly bigger drawers on the end and another drop down access. It can be improved. The issue is, I am not an interior designer or a master at re-architecting and re-defining useable space. I am also confined by the layout of the galley itself, which I do not want to change.
I have a dream for the galley but I will need to see if the budget allows for it. Last year at the boat show we visited a booth that blew our minds.
These people seem to have a solution for everything! Oh the improvements that could be made, the happiness of the Admiral, and the fresh banana cream pies that could be had….. 🙂
I am so sick and tired of spam emails in my comments that I am considering disabling this feature. Arghhhh, no I don’t need viagra, (well at least not yet, might want to keep one of these links for later in life) and no I don’t need my site to go viral, and no, your automated content gibberish does not need to be in my site. F@#$ O## to all of you spammers!!!!!
ok rant over.
If you are actually posting a comment, please be sure to use a real email address and at least a name that resembles a real name, otherwise I will just delete it. thanks
If you have been following this project since the beginning, you would have noticed that I have not been as active maintaining this blog in the last year as I was in at the start. Apologies for that.
In October of 2015 my father was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and at that time was given 3-6 months to live as it had already spread to his kidneys, lungs, bladder and liver. They performed a colostomy at that time. Over the last year I travelled back and forth to Northern Ontario countless times to be with him. He was in and out of the hospital and his overall health seemed to go up and down. At first he responded well to the radiation treatments, and it looked like he might be making improvements, but then that changed and they had to stop. Every time I went, I could see his decline and in the end we were just waiting for that final call.
I was lucky enough to be able to go and spend a week with him in August. He required 24 hour care by that point and I am honoured that I was able to be there for him, even though it was only for a week. My younger sister spent 3 months as the primary caregiver and by doing so allowed him to stay in his home as long as possible, which was his wish.
My father always dreamed about sailing off to the South Pacific. As he grew older and his dream grew farther away, he became negative about the concept in general, saying things like, the beaches are all ruined with garbage and the ocean is all polluted, and it just isn’t the same anymore. I believe this was simply his way of dealing with never having achieved his dream. One of the last conversations I had with him while I was there in the middle of the night, he asked me what it was really like out there. I told him how incredible it is to be sailing through the night with dolphins playing at the bow, and luminescent creatures rising up from the deep, and the thrill and fear of surfing down monstrous waves. These were my experiences and I was able to share them with him when he needed them the most and I pray that he was able to come to peace with it, and that he was able to dream again.
My father passed away November 11th, 2016 at approximately 11pm at night. He fought an incredible battle, but in the end cancer took his life at 77 years of age.
I think I am going to stop calling this site a boat refit site and start calling it a home renovation site. The farther we go down this road, the more it seems fitting. I mean hey, I’ve watched a few home renovation shows over the years and what is the overall plot. Search for the right project. Do a bit of planning, gut the thing, move a few walls, insulate, re-wire, re-plumb, finish, paint and voila, admire the end product. Maybe we should have Akupara TV! It is the exact same thing, just in a different shape, however we have the added excitement of once we are all done, we have to see if the damn thing floats or not. That’s more drama than the average house reno, they don’t have to pass the float test at the end of the day.
So I was talking to a gentleman at the boat yard, both of us are in the midst of a complete gut and rebuild. He is re-doing an old powerboat, but essentially the same deal. We see each other quite regularly and at the same time we see a lot of abandoned dreams in and around our 2 projects. The conversation turned to how long the Admiral and I have been at this and I told him a little shy of 2 years now and we still have 8 months left at least. He has been at it for about 6 months now. Why are we still plugging away at it? What makes us keep at it? Why haven’t we walked away and let the dream die like so many others have done. It would be more than easy! As the lyrics in the song Southern Cross attest to, “And we never failed to fail it was the easiest thing to do.” Why do I waste my Saturday’s and Sunday’s going to a dirty, smelly, boat yard filled with undesirables. Always being dirty and choking on dust of some sort whether it be wood or fiberglass. Spending ludicrous amounts of money to maintain and attempt to improve this old boat. Hell, for the amount of money we have spent so far we could have bought a very nice, ready to go, 30-35 foot sailboat. And we still have a lot of money to spend. (speaking of which, I need to update the cost page)
I don’t really have the answer to any of these questions. Perhaps I am too stubborn, perhaps I simply don’t want to be called a failure. Perhaps I have nothing better to do with my time and money. Perhaps I am a wee bit off my rocker and actually enjoy all of this rebuild stuff. Or perhaps I have had this dream for so long, that it is so deeply engrained in me, that if it took 20 years to finish the project, I would keep going. I really don’t know. Of course the insanity part is a given, you would have to be insane to start anything like this, let alone continue it.
Well, in any case, I am not abandoning the project any time soon so I guess I had better finish my morning coffee, put on my old work clothes and head down to the boatyard. Maybe one day we will actually be finished.
