Rebuilding

 Well, we certainly found a cure for our boredom. But where to keep her? Much of Cape Coral is a network of roads separated by canals, and every house has a dock. But not every house has a boat for said dock! 'Twas Kristen's idea to ask around if one of our neighbors without a boat would allow us to tie up for a while. And so we met 90-year old Edna. The next day we started the diesel, untied, and entered the maze of canals to Edna's, only a quarter mile by road, but three quarters by water. 

The first order of business was to get rid of junk. Delaminated plywood, rotten cushions, and about twenty PFDs in various stages of decay. Serviceable PFDs we donated to Kiwanis, everything else went into neighborhood trash bins on trash day. We inventoried the remainder – plumbing parts, extra wires, more anchors than needed, ropes, etc. 

Next became the herculean task of re-building her. We were still living at Rock's place while hoping to sail Topaz, and luckily he had a Sailrite sewing machine, whereupon I set to work with Sailrite's kit and instructions to fashion a new binini. This was certainly the most complicated sewing task I have ever undertaken! But now we have sun and rain protection over the entire cockpit.

New purple bimini and purple stripe.

We found a diesel mechanic, and planned to give the engine a '100-hour tuneup'. Ha ha ha! A new starter, rebuilt water pump, filters, cleaning this and that, and every week the state of the engine went downhill. This was becoming a familiar story, given our experience with Topaz
. When it became apparent that replacing/rebuilding the injectors would mean removing the engine, we decided to abandon the engine, a Yanmar 2GM, into which we had wasted $2,700. 

Engine, sitting on the dock.

Then Covid happened.