Saving Our Back With A Motor Hoist!

When thinking of the reality of living on our boat full-time and having to lift our dinghy motor on and off Nirvana's stern, it sounded like a PITA .. and our back! When we looked up Garhauer's motor hoist, we figured the price was well worth the convenience of easily lifting "Mr. T" off/on our boat. We know that cruising will sometimes be exhausting, and that there will be times we'll feel lazy. A hoist will make it less likely that we'll take the lazy way out and neglect our motor.

Garhauer has a great reputation, and we weren't disappointed when we received our engine hoist. It looked to be of good quality, and it was pretty easy to install. The first step was installing the "ball" and backing plate on our stern, which would hold the stainless steel tube. Ken used butyl tape for the installation, and the hardest part was having Ken squeeze into our rear lazarette to install the backing plate. I knew I'd get him to do yoga one way or another!

Once the "ball" had set, Ken simply attached the two pieces of stainless steel tubing, secured the black sleeve over the joint, then placed the stainless steel tube with collapsible arm on to the ball. He then attached the tube to our rail with the hardware provided, and that was pretty much it! The hoist also came with 60 ft of line, so we were set.

The big question was, "How the heck are we gonna get "Mr. T" to our boat?! The motor had been sitting on a saw horse in our storage shed, and I managed to help Ken lift it into the back of our truck. After a trip to our daughter's garage for some TLC on our motor (post soon), we then lifted "Mr. T" back into the truck and drove to our marina. As we drove to the marina, thoughts of carrying "Mr. T" upright through the parking lot, past the condos, and down our dock with Ken had me a little worried. "Mr. T" is just under 50 lbs. and I wasn't sure I'd be able to carry it too far.

As luck would have it, a sailing neighbor on our dock pulled into the parking lot right after we had parked and were working on getting "Mr. T" out of the truck. I can't tell ya how relieved I was when he offered to help Ken carry the motor to our boat! I grabbed my phone and snapped a quick photo (blurry, I know) before they disappeared. The boating community is always ready to lend a hand!

In no time, "Mr. T" was perched on our motor mount with no mishaps. The next step was to bring our dinghy out of storage and hope it still held air! 

 With the hoist installed and a harness on the motor (yellow strap in 1st photo is gone), we had no doubt that the money spent on this was well spent. Not only will it make handling our motor easier, but it will also be helpful in lifting water, fuel, and other heavy items onto the boat. My back is already feeling better!

Hasta luego .. until then. Mid-Life Cruising!

A New Salon Table!

Since moving aboard Nirvana last year, Ken & I had been living without a salon table. We had a salon table, but it had been in storage while working on Nirvana's interior teak and other projects. After returning from our 3-month insurance adjusting adventure this past December, we decided that it was finally time to pull our table out of storage. 

While we were looking forward to having a place to eat a good meal, we weren't looking forward to the hanging such an ugly table on our beautifully restored teak bulkhead! You see, for some reason Catalina had been using the most awful veneer on their salon & navigation tables .. so fake & yellow! I had looked into covering our table with fabric or artwork and then coating in epoxy, but that wasn't gonna be cheap. With so many other more important projects on our list to do, we accepted the fact that we were gonna live with an ugly table in our salon .. at least for a year or two.

Here's a photo taken before our table went into storage .. and before the teak was restored. This picture makes the teak look much better than it really did (see more before pics here), but you get the idea of how fake our table looked!

When I watched Ken grab our table from our storage shed, I watched pieces of the table fall off the bottom of the table! Yep, not only was this table ugly .. it was junk! Evidently, the table soaked up moisture from the concrete floor and it started to disintegrate. We weren't gonna be able to use this table after all. We were gonna have to get a new one .. can't say we were disappointed!

Ken had the brilliant idea of calling a local cabinet & counter-top guy, who said he could make us a new table out of marine plywood covered with counter-top laminate .. for about $150 bucks! So, Ken removed the table's leg and trim, sketched the table with its measurements, then brought the old table to the counter-top guy. We chose some cheap, white matte counter-top that the guy had lying around for the back of the table, and a nice "faux teak" laminate with a reddish tint for the top of the table in a satin finish that is scratch-resistant.

After about a week, we picked up our new table! This isn't the best photo, but we were really happy with the look of our new table. It looked like real teak .. not that fake stuff we had before!

Ken then added the freshly stained teak trim to the new table, as well as the leg & hardware ...

After hanging our new salon table on our bulkhead, I think we did a pretty good job matching our restored teak interior! Our new table blends right in and is much lighter than our ole hunk of junk. I'm so glad that our original table fell apart! 

We've had our new table since February, and we've been enjoying having a place to eat a meal in comfort. We still eat a fair amount of meals without the table, but when we cook a good meal or have guests over for dinner .. we don't wanna have to use our laps. Our daughter and son-in-law have come over for a few meals, and all four of us fit comfortably .. and I wasn't embarrassed to be eating on such an ugly table!

 Not only can we eat on the table, but it can also be lowered down to our settee's level and turned into a full-sized bed! Our old table served this purpose as well, so we just add the cushions that are made for this purpose (one looks like a pillow, one snaps on the side of our aft-cabin, and the other usually stays on the side of our v-verth), add some sheets and we have a bed!

When it's raining or Ken & I just wanna lounge around, we just turn the salon area into a lounging area .. perfect place to read a book or watch television. Sometimes we never make it to the v-berth for the night!

Not a bad place to enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning!

On Father's Day, Ken received a ceramic "grill plate" that our daughter painted .. with our grandson's footprints as the flames! We love it, and it looks great on our new table. The colors are perfect!

It took me six months to finally write about our new table, and I've got so much more to catch up on! Shortly after installing our table, we sewed & installed curtains, then sailed to Mexico, came back and tackled our propane project, and have been in project mode ever since. We did sneak in another adventure last month, but we also knocked out a couple more projects so stay tuned. I have more projects to write about .. and we have more projects to tackle!

Hasta luego .. until then. Mid-Life Cruising!