6/9/2019
Things are moving right along with the refit! Kyle continues to work 12 hour days 6 days a week with one day off from boat work.. to go to actual work 😉 We don’t mean to, but we both seem to work better under a quick approaching deadline, so although we are incredibly busy, we are happy and feeling on track. Our massive to-do list is starting to dwindle down and our black marker is crossing more and more items off.
Sirocco currently has new deck paint, very organized wiring, and her sails are almost finished. Kyle has been able to sew our sails himself at a sail loft in downtown St. Petersburg, and we are so grateful for not only the opportunity to use the sail loft, but also for the people who have helped him volunteering their time to teach him how to tack, stick, sew, tape, and soon finish the sails. He is getting quite good at sewing and I am always so impressed with his stitches! He claims its all in the guidance of the truly professional sailmakers at the loft and the quality machine he gets to use.
Deck Before:
Deck During and After:
Our Main Sail:
We worked on the rigging this weekend and installed all new chain plates of 316L electropolished stainless steel, with shiny new nuts and bolts to match. Tomorrow we will install the chain plates for the back stay and then the rig goes back up which means within a week or two we will have a new rig and new sails installed.
The wiring in Sirocco was Kyle’s biggest fear of the entire refit because he has very little experience with such things. So he read books, did research and went for it. Throughout the 40 years of her life and the various owners, the wiring became a total mess. When we first bought Sirocco in order to turn on the anchor light you had to first turn on the water pump switch and then the the navigation lights… neither of which have anything to do with the anchor light. The whole boat was like this with random wires going to random switches instead of the quality switch panel on board. Another complaint of Kyle’s was that much of the wire was not tinned marine grade, but plain copper automotive wire. As you can see in the photos, Kyle, with the help of his dad Rick, was able to remove a LOT of wires that were basically doing nothing. He also took a rats nest of wires and reorganized it into an orderly and labeled panel.
Before:
After:
In between working 80 hours a week, I am trying to finish Lucy’s (Sirocco’s dinghy) refit on my own time. I was very proud of myself on my last project because without any assistance or question asking of Kyle, I was able to measure, cut, and grind out a new hatch for Lucy’s stern locker. I was beaming when I finished the project and the hatch fit perfectly in the hole that I made. It was an itchy project filled with sanding and grinding fiberglass, but it was rewarding. I am now determined to fill the old hatch in and fiberglass over it on my own as well 🙂
Overall things are moving right along and we are working hard to get our home into a sea-worthy, comfortable, and beautiful state. I can’t wait to see her in two months from now and compare the before and after pictures! Such a rewarding thing to do.
Anyway, for those of you who followed along the SOLVI build and our journey down the river, I thought I would give a little update on what she is doing, because it is rather amazing. The man who purchased her renamed her to SOLVEIG (which is the full version of SOLVI). So from now on I will refer to her as SOLVEIG. Well she was purchased with the goal to race her in the R2AK (Race to Alaska) – and that is exactly what she is doing right now!
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None of these videos or footage belong to me, just sharing from social media!
To learn more about the race click here: https://r2ak.com/ or @racetoalaska on facebook
To see some awesome videos of SOLVEIG and her new owners click here:
and
https://www.facebook.com/racetoalaska/videos/442149266583309/
and
https://www.facebook.com/racetoalaska/videos/687226025047271/
To follow SOLVEIG on her race to Alaska click here: http://tracker.r2ak.com/
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Kyle and I have been having SO much fun following her along via social media and the R2AK website. The drone footage is my particular favorite because we never got to see her from that view, and I think she looks so beautiful out there on the open waters of Vancouver. (https://youtu.be/X47oZJQohCg) It’s a hard feeling to articulate, but this particular footage made me teary eyed knowing that we built that boat together and now she out in the big wide world on her own. The new owner made some changes which were fun to see, but overall she is still our SOLVI and we are very proud that she off on another adventure.
Stay tuned for some more refit updates- in just 3 weeks we pull Sirocco out of the water to work on her bottom. She will then spend a month out of the water at a boat yard. After that, it’s launch day and all the final details. Yeah!
-Flipper 🙂
Skipper and Flipper 
THAT is our old stomping grounds! Loved it.
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