Welcome to my blog!
Back at the end of 2013 I decided (apropos of nothing) that I wanted to live on a sailboat. Armed with only a copy of This Old Boat and my blissful ignorance of anything to do with boats, sailing or handiwork I bought the first boat I looked at, a mere 3 hours drive + 2 hours ferry ride away. What a great idea!
Luckily the boat (a Cherubini designed Hunter 36) turned out not to have anything too disastrously wrong with it, so with a lot of time, money and reading I managed to get it into a livable condition. And then I discovered I liked sailing and decided to sail around the world.
Well, I got as far as Mexico before firstly Brexit and then Covid scuttled my plans. So I sold Gudgeon, the Hunter 36, down in Mexico and am now back in BC with a second boat, a Rafiki 37 called Sooner.
Rewiring Sooner’s AC: Part 3
The last part of the AC rewiring project was to replace the panel. The old panel looked like this Of note, there is only one on/off breaker type, the rest are push button meaning that there was no way to turn anything except the water heater on or off. Also, there...
Rewiring Sooner’s AC: Part 2
After I got the smartplug and galvanic isolator installed, it was time to tackle the inside bits of the 120 volt system. The first order of business was to replace the 3 AC outlets with GFCIs. These are the things you'll see in bathrooms in houses, and basically trip...
Rewiring Sooner’s AC: Part 1
Sooner's wiring is unfortunately standard issue 'old boat wiring' which is to say, pretty bad (see previous blog post on the state of gudges wiring) and sorting that out would be the first priority, as 'fire' is one of the two sure ways to lose a boat. She has a...
Moving Sooner to Victoria
So like Gudge (and Frawg), I'd bought a boat somewhere where I didn't live. Pender Island, in this case. Luckily, unlike 7 years ago I had the skills (and more importantly, the insurance coverage) to move the boat myself. Unluckily, much like 7 years ago, I'd decided...
I bought a new boat
Well, the title says it all, I have a new (large, sorry Frawg) boat, say hello to Sooner everyone! Sooner is a Rafiki 37 but a bit unusual in that unlike all the other ~50 Rafikis, she was built in Canada. This means she has some differences in layout in the inside as...
Summer Update
Well, end of summer update. Or autumn now I guess. Anyway, I'm not dead - just had very little boatwise to talk about after selling Gudge. I did go halves with Emma on a shark 24 called FRAWG, which is very grubby, green coloured boat with wonky spreaders and an...
Domain name change complete!
Well it was a bit longer than 'within the week' but I finally finished the domain name changeover. You should be seeing this now on saildivefish.ca (a studiously non-tied-to-boat-name domain) and hopefully, that is the last time ever I have to move domains because...
Pardon my dust
Over the next week or so, I'll be making a few changes to this website - the most important one is moving over to www.saildivefish.ca as Life on Gudgeon is certainly not accurate anymore. After thinking on it for a few months, I plan to keep the blog going as a more...
Gudge is sold!
As the title says - after owning her for 7 years and living on her for 6 and a half, I no longer own Gudgeon. She was sold to a couple who are just starting their adventure and I think she'll be a great first boat for them (and is getting reflagged back to a US vessel...
Selling the boat
So, since my last post I made a firm decision - I was going to sell Gudge, get my stuff shipped back to Canada, and then buy another boat back in BC at some point after the market has cooled off a bit. Oh, and make enough money in 2 years to retire permanently from...
