Easter Long Weekend 2010

We had a pretty relaxing Easter weekend (and hope you did too). We went up to Sydney to spend the four day holiday on Lucey Blue. Lucky for us we got a relatively pleasant drive up....the traffic leaving Sydney looked bad from our perspective (it looked even worse for them as we returned home last night):


Lucey Blue is currently still on a d'Albora Marina swing mooring in beautiful Quakers Hat Bay in Middle Harbour, Sydney. This bay is very quiet and pretty, and was a nice place to spend the weekend.

Part of the marina package is a fast tender service out to the boat (check out the size of the outboard....PHOARRRrrrrrr)...


I love this ride...and so do the kids (although you can see me holding Ryan's hand...I get worried he'll blow right over the back of the boat)...


We had some jobs that needed doing before we could go anywhere on Lucey Blue this weekend. One of the jobs involved the steering. I'll post about that later though, because that'll be a technical post and I'll need Nick to vet it before I publish. I'd be likely to say something along the lines that this big brass bracket with two big wheelie things on it, was....wearing out, and this other brass arm thing in the engine locker had a big crack in it and Nick has to replace them both (after much ummmming and aaaaaaahhhing, too-ing and fro-ing, pondering of the Harken and Edson catalogues, and outlaying of mucho $$$).

The other job for the weekend was tying in the mended trampolines. They have been mended (patched and re-sewn)...to ensure that we don't have one of the kids disappearing through a gaping hole at some point. I had wanted new ones, but it was decided that they could be mended...

Lucey Blue looked really odd without them on, and it was surprising to me how much their absence affected the deck room. I felt like we'd lost half the boat:


Nick kept telling me the trampolines were going to take a long time to put back in...about 3 hours later, and one trampoline down...I finally believed him ;-)


I'm glad he has good balance!

...finally, near the end of the day...the task has been finished. Nice work! (the funniest thing was, as he finished the job, and leaned back to survey his handiwork, he says 'we might still replace these, make them look a bit nicer'...LOL!).


So now the kids are safe, and enjoying their trampolines again...






I'll leave it at that for now. Here is a pretty pic out our cabin aft hatch, sunrise on Easter Sunday:


Ciao!
Sam.

New Saloon Windows and Hatches Installed

First of all, I feel like I should apologise to those of you that couldn't care less about saloon windows and hatches. If you couldn't tell...we are pretty darn pleased about our new windows...so blog them to the world we will :-).

For full impact...remember this shot?

Then compare to this one...same window! Seriously...did they forget to put the windows back in?

GENTLY buffing them up...

It is lovely to see what's going on outside so clearly...

Even if it is an approaching storm!

Pardon the rope mess...we were playing up the mast...



This way we can also keep an eye on what the kids are getting up to inside ;-)...

When the saloon window job was almost complete we looked at the hatches...oh dear!

...and took out the wallet again.....and now you can see through them too!



We also got some little solar powered extractor fans installed on the hatches in both heads and the saloon roof hatch, to help keep the air flowing...



Okay! That's pretty much all I have to say about windows and hatches. They look fabulous! Thanks John.

Sam.

New Saloon Windows going in...

We decided to come spend the Easter long weekend on Lucey Blue...and here we are quietly bobbing about in Quakers Hat Bay...but these photos were taken a few weeks ago while the whole window-replacement adventure was still under way:











We have some new photos so you can see the new windows in place...but we'll save them for the next post...as well as some of the awesome rain squall we got caught in on Sydney Harbour this afternoon (minus a bimini and spray dodger) it was lots of soggy fun!

Sam.

Replacing the saloon windows on a Lagoon 42 TPI

I thought I'd jump on here and post some window information. Groovy huh? ;-)

I am talking about Lucey Blue's saloon windows:


They don't look too bad from here...but this is what they look like from inside:




...even outside they looked pretty grim in places:


We're not sure exactly how old they are or if they've ever been replaced. If they have been replaced, we don't know about it...so they could be 18 years old.

While we were up in Sydney in January we contacted John from John's Boat Hatches and Windows and got a quote to replace all of the saloon windows and hatches. We then decided to go ahead with this rather significant piece of work.

First, the windows got taken out.....I managed to get a few shots of Lucey Blue from inside and out...with her attractive plastic temporary windows:




I am going to leave it at that for now. I'll be back later with some installation shots!

Have a great day.
Sam.