A sign of the coming spring – the Defender catalogue has arrived!

It feels like forever since that day last August when we hauled Pegu Club out of the water to begin her refit.  At that time, the end of April was so far away, but the other day I found myself counting the weeks left until splash and I suddenly realized that we had ten weeks to go!  Holy smokes!  The arrival of this year’s Defender catalogue has only added to the sense of urgency:

Having the Defender catalogue show up in the mailbox is the equivalent to the arrival of the Sears Christmas catalogue when we were kids.  So exciting!  Jeff calls it the kickoff to Spending Season, and we will certainly be doing our best to support the marine industry this spring when Defender’s Annual Warehouse Sale begins on March 31st.  In the meantime, however, we still have plenty to keep us busy.

Boat work has ground to a halt for the last few weekends as Mother Nature has been decidedly uncooperative.  This weekend’s forecast is for temperatures in the mid-40’s down in Groton, so it’s time to get back to work.

With ten weeks left, our top priority is to finish the items that are mandatory in order to splash on April 30th: finish sanding, barrier coat and anti-fouling paint on the bottom, install two thruhulls and seacocks, and install our new chainplates.  Unfortunately, much of this is weather dependent in that we need warmer temperatures.  The weather service has forecasted a warmer-than-usual spring, so hopefully they’ll be right.  Fingers crossed that as we roll through March we’ll be able to cross those items off of the list.

In the meantime, we’re going to work on the rest of this year’s to-do list.  This weekend we will absolutely finish sanding the bottom.  I’m thinking four more hours ought to do it. We’re also going to install the Nature’s Head and the Origo, remove the forward hatch lens which cracked on the first day we owned Pegu Club, and strip the wiring at the base of the mast (we think that’s why some of the mast lights aren’t working).  The other items on the list require us to purchase things, and we were hoping to wait until the Defender sale so that we could take advantage of the store-wide discounts.  With time running short we may have to rethink that strategy, but we’ll see how we do this weekend.

As for work that can be done at home, the Sailrite sewing machine will be working hard while I sew our winch covers, curtains, and make some minor sail repairs.  We also need to finish putting the new foam in the old cushion covers, and I’d really like to strip and varnish the hatchboards before the season starts.  Whew!  It’s going to be a busy ten weeks.  Stay tuned!