A TASTE OF SPRING

With the temperature rising into the 70's earlier this week there was no excuse not to head down to the boatyard and check on BIANKA. It had been a couple of weeks since the last visit and despite some nasty weather and a couple of days of high winds I saw no further damage on the deck area. Even the bilge looked surprisingly similar to when I left it. No additional water had entered except the little bit of antifreeze I splashed into it back in February:

Good to see. Apparently the previous water levels I had observed were from snow that had gotten blown in through some of the hatches during the winter storms. All was well so I got to work on starting to implement some spring projects. one was to make some custom seat cushions for the two Engel refrigeration units I have on board in the main cabin. Unpacking some of the patterning material I had bought from Sailrite I quickly made an outline of the Engel tops on the pattern material:

After cutting out the pattern. I'll be taking it home to use my Sailrite sewing machine in fabricating the new cushions. I'm not the only one who will be fabricating some new things this year. The boatyard guys are busy fabricating some new floating docks to replace ones that were damaged when the harbor suffered a quick freeze during a cold snap a few weeks ago:

Spring is just around the corner and I'll be getting busier getting BIANKA ready for the up coming season.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ME

I've been pretty busy since I pulled the boat and so it has been hard to keep posting on the blog. So I thought I'd share a little Christmas present I bought for myself. It's a Sailrite Folding Sewing machine table. Since I bought the Sailrite Ultrafeed® LSZ-1 Sewing Machine last year. It seemed like a good idea to enhance my sewing area with a proper table to work on. It came fully assembled and flat in the box:

It was pretty easy to setup. I had to adjust the sunken platform for the proper height of the LZ-1 sewing machine. It took just a few minutes.

Once that was done it was simply a matter of loading the Sailrite sewing machine in it's base cabinet  onto the platform:

It sits nice and flush with the table surface. With the legs locked it was pretty stable and has a convenient ruler running across the edge of the table. I think it will help with my winter project which is sewing a new sail cover for BIANKA. More on that later.

MISTAKES WILL BE MADE

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without

I try to live by the above proverb on both land and sea. I will try to not throw something out until it has no useful function for me. Even then I try an recycle it if I can. A long time ago I bought a boat bag from L.L. Bean. I think it must have been over twenty years ago. It's been around and is beaten up and worn but, still was useful for carrying things. That is until the handles broke recently. The carrying part of the bag was still very usable.  So when I bought my Sailrite Ultrafeed® LSZ-1 Sewing Machine last year one of the first projects was to

FROM THE USE WHAT YOU GOT FILE: Plotting tools

I've been catching up on some projects I've been wanting to do as the sailing season heads to an end. Some of which involve using my fairly new Sailrite LSZ-1 Sewing Machine. I bought a bunch of stuff on board to use and help with the planned projects. Things like tape measures, fabrics, snap hardware and the like. But, I found that I did not bring a straight edge ruler. So making straight hem lines has been a little awkward. The simple straight edge really comes in handy when extending and measuring lines too. So I looked around the boat and found my Weems & Plath Marine Navigation Plotting Tools are coming in very handy when measuring and drawing on various fabric pieces. Seems the same tools used for  drawing straight lines on a chart also help do the same on Sunbrella fabric. So I really don't need the straight edge rulers at all.