Back the Boat Up.

By Captain Scott Buckley

Back the truck up.
I realize my last post was from about 2.5 years ago.  We have put SV Kooky Dance on the hard in Green Cove Springs FL. and were headed to Houston to make some money by working 3 to 5 months to do some improvements to Kooky Dance.  We both found jobs that would agree to our 5 month terms and had been able to find a bedroom at a friend of my wife that lives alone and wanted some help recovering from here surgery.  Both my wife's place of employment and mine started offering pretty good packages if we agreed to stay a little longer.  We both ended up agreeing to 2 yr contracts to stay and work.  Part of the contract was to allow us time to go get SV Kooky Dance back in the water and hire a crew to bring her back to Texas.  I will admit I was a nervous nelly will someone else sail our baby from Jacksonville, FL. to Kemah, TX. They had a spot tracker that would update every 10 minutes and think think I tracked it for the entire 14 day transit.  I did see our SV Kooky Dance log some 170+ mile days while making the Gulf crossing.   I won't bore you with the rest of the details but not because I like you it is because there were a lot of details and as a writer I am pretty lazy.        
Suffice to say we bought a house and some vehicles and worked for 2 years building the cruising kitty and working on SV Kooky Dance.
So what did Kooky Dance get:
Dinghy Davits which required removal of the Monitor windvane steering
Added lift points to the Dinghy
Added outboard motor mount to the dinghy
Added drain plug to the Dinghy
Added bigger hatches to the dinghy
Made a cover for the dinghy
Repainted the dinghy
Built a deck box for storage.
Installed a washdown pump
Installed second depth transducer in the Furuno
Installed a Spectra watermaker
Installed a 12V outlet in the stateroom for the anchor alarm. 
Bought and installed a 3rd anchor (Rochna Vulcan)
Bought and rigged an asymmetrical spinnaker
Installed 360 watts of solar panels in addition to existing 280 watts.
Installed Victrom MPPT solar charger controller
Installed a total enclosure for the cockpit.
Make a stay sail bag for storing the stay sail on deck for rapid deployment
Rebuilt and serviced Simrad autopilot
Installed midlevel shelves in the hanging lockers
Installed 4 x Oasis Firefly carbon foam batteries
Bought a multitude of spares for the engine and autopilot.

SV Kooky Dance in the yard for upgrades

The water maker install

Dinghy davits and solar panels

The deck box

We had found some water in the core of the deck at the bow near where the check stay goes thru the deck.  That required cutting out the core and replacing it and I did not think I could do it myself and have it look decent.  I contracted that work and am happy with the results.
So we were not sitting around making money we were also seriously upgrading SV Kooky Dance for offshore and remote sailing and thus far (we have actually been cruising for 8 days as I write this) our preparations have paid off.  Our Buddy boat SV Minnow has pointed out our preparations were much better than theirs as were have had few problems comparatively.