Boat work and finding our sea legs

Hello! We have had quite the week living and traveling on Maya. This was basically our first week living aboard as well. We have learned a ton in such a short amount of time- mostly that EVERYTHING takes way longer on a boat. Need that one tool that buried in a back compartment? You're gonna need to take everything out and completely blow up the boat to get it. I swear the boat can be clean and organized one second and then the next it's a complete mess! And we made some HUGE messes aboard..... however we did make a ton of progress on boat work and even snuck in a few trips to the islands.

Our first order of business is getting the boat set up so we can cruise, which means inspecting and taking stock of our anchor and chain setup. We have never dropped anchor in this boat so we thought it prudent that we inspect every foot of it. Glad we did because the connection from chain to rope is in bad shape!

Our chain to rope connection looks bad so we will be upgrading

Inspecting our anchor rode on the dock

We also found out that we need a bridle system that connects the boat's chain to the boat- so the weight of the boat isn't pulling on our anchor windlass (which is the big motor that brings up the anchor). We ordered that part and moved onto the next project. We will test our anchor system soon- there's sure to be a blog post about it.

This past winter we made a bunch of purchases at the Seattle Boat Show (with boat show discount, I might add!). One of those purchases was an Automatic Identification System (AIS) which is basically smart radar for our boat. When we are out at sea, we can see all the other boat's name, heading, speed, size, etc all from our chartplotter and our phones. Super cool and a huge leap in terms of safety and navigation aboard. As mentioned earlier, the job took waaaaay longer than we expected because everything takes longer on a boat! It was a fun project though- getting to run wires throughout the boat and getting to know the boat's electrical system was good too. The system is installed and functional. Major win!

Our AIS system is the blue thing on the right. Other boxes are our smart battery charging system (white box), and our NEMA (the boat's marine instrument network) boxes (black)

We had to make a custom bracket to mount our AIS GPS antenna on Maya's railing

Maya's electrical hub. That engineering degree is being put to use!

It wasn't all work and no play this past week though- we managed to spend 3 nights out in the islands (we used mooring balls- still no functional anchor system yet). We had guests coming to stay with us over the weekend so we wanted to do a recon mission out to the islands. We are so glad we did because we discovered an issue with our engine's exhaust system! Oh no! Our boat has a "water lift muffler" that was leaking and cracked. The muffler takes the hot water and exhaust gases from the engine and helps lift that mixture up and out of the boat. Our engine sits below waterline so it needs this muffler to help overcome gravity. Anywho, the whole top was cracked and we could see it spewing gas and water out of it. Worse, the inlet hose was leaking bad, which was filling our boat with salt water! Ahhh! It wasn't gushing, but still! Salt water coming into the boat is bad, and the boat would have been dead in the water if that muffler blew apart. We kept a close eye on the muffler as we cruised back to the marina. The next few days were spent sourcing the part and getting that new muffler installed. It was a dirty, cramped job, but we were able to fix it the day before our guests arrived!

UV protected!

Rowing to shore at James Island

The big black cylinder is the water lift muffler

Here's a small glimpse of what the old muffler was doing- it had to go!

Beginning to remove the muffler...


The view from another angle

Here's the old muffler- you can see cracks on the surface- water and engine exhaust were spewing from there! Ah!

Luke and Rachel came up for the weekend to spend a night aboard Maya out in the islands. The weather forecast for the weekend called for rain and cold. Undeterred by the forecast we headed out into the islands and were subsequently drenched with rain. After initially having trouble finding a mooring ball for the night, we pulled into an anchorage just as the rain stopped... happy hour commenced and it didn't rain the rest of the trip!
Great trip out into the islands.

Photogenic Pup

Maya and Mt Baker

Maya with Mt Baker in the background- taken at James Island State Park

Towing Rita on our way to Cypress

Rita and Maya at Pelican Beach on Cypress Island

This gives you an idea of the currents that run through the islands- it's like a big river!

Cup of coffee at Cypress

Freezing on our way home from our recon mission

Soggy on our way out to Cypress Island- thankfully the weather improved dramatically after we tied up to the mooring ball!

Jenny, Rachel, and Disco coming back from a mission to shore

Happy hour crew at Cypress Island

And the view from the Pelican Beach on Cypress Island