Down to the Last Punchlist Items before Sailing Away

We’ve got our major boat projects done! We installed 900W of solar panels and converted the fridge and freezer from AC to DC. Now it’s time to tackle the last punchlist items before sailing away as we are getting closer to our sailing away date.

As with all boat projects, it felt that as we crossed one work item off, two more kept getting added. We had so many items on our list, it helped us both to create a schedule of when we would complete each item so we could focus on getting through the ever growing list. We also had to move items on the list to a list of things we will get done after we leave the dock. Otherwise, we would never get out! Below I’ll run through our list of 13 items we felt we had to get done before we left.

1 Order More Spare Parts

As we are getting ready to leave the dock, we won’t have a physical address nearby to have items shipped to. We started picking items up from the stores where we could, or shipping them to Scott’s dad’s place in Florida, where we will plan to stop for a few days when we get down in that area. Some items we needed include, but are not limited to, a spare float switch for our sump pump, new shore power plug ends to replace bad ones that got burnt up on our spare cords, spare air filters for the engine and generator, and spare water filter for our fresh water drinking faucet in the galley.

2 Fix Port Window Leak

This was a big one that we scheduled when we had a couple of days of no rain. We have been battling a leak on our port window in our salon. After several unsuccessful attempts of resealing the window, we had to take the window completely off, and properly reseal the window with VHB 3M tape and sealant. This has proven to be a success!

3 Oil Changes

Scott changed the oil and filters on both the engine and generator, as well as did a thorough cleaning of the engine “room”.

4 Organize Lazarettes

We have two large lazarettes in our swim platform, and two smaller lazarettes in our cockpit. We dug everything out of them and got rid of things we didn’t need (anyone need a telephone cable?!?) and reorganized them all for what we felt were essential items. We are both “list” people, so we also updated our inventory list for the boat so we know what we have and where it is stored.

5 Sanitize Water Tanks

We have 3 potable water tanks on the boat, one 54-gallon tank that also connects to our water maker, one 45-gallon tank, and one 95-gallon tank. We do drink the water directly from these tanks, so we like to keep the tanks clean by sanitizing them on an annual basis with bleach water. We were still at our dock in Mobile, AL, we thought this would be a great time to do this while we still have access to city water.

6 Defrost Fridge & Freezer

This is another item that is much easier to do at the dock, since we use water to defrost our fridge and freezer quickly. Since we converted to the evaporator plates with the compressors running off of DC power, we have found that we need to periodically (every 3-4 months) need to defrost the plates.

7 Windlass Maintenance

We followed the manufacture’s instructions (Lewmar) to make sure we keep our windlass in good working order.

8 Vet Visit

We wanted to make sure that Mangaux was up to date on all of his shots and had plenty of his heartworm and flea/tick medication before taking off. We also needed to get this done before we sold our vehicle!

9 Set up Florida Residency and Register Pelagia in Florida

We wanted to switch our residency to Florida as there is no state income tax here. We also plan to spend more time in Florida than any other state in the future. I describe the process and various steps it took to set up our residency in Florida in a previous article. It did involve going to Clay County, Florida in person, so we needed to get this done before we left and still had a vehicle.

10 Stock up on Diesel, Gasoline & Propane

We keep two 5-gallon jugs of diesel for our engine and generator to supplement our 100-gallon tank and two 5-gallon jugs of gasoline for our outboard engine. We also have two small propane tanks we wanted to top off for our stove/oven.

11 Final Food Provisioning

There will be grocery stores along the way, but it is much easier to stock the boat with food and other items with a vehicle and the boat at a dock. We stocked up on chicken, pork chops, hamburger meat, (and maybe several boxes of wine!!) at Costco and then finished our food shopping at Walmart. We had plenty of room in our freezer for all of this meat. It is a bit of a challenge to buy enough food for an undetermined amount of time, while also having a place to store all of the food. We cleared out a drawer in the forward berth for canned goods, and bought ingredients for several meals we like to cook. We also bought some easy items to eat, such as crackers and cheese, and lunch meat (not my favorite) to eat while we are underway.

12 Laundry

For the past year and a half while living on the boat at the marina, we have been going to the laundry mat each week. We’ve become quite used to being able to get all of our weekly laundry done in under 2 hours. This week we washed everything we could think of from towels, sheets, cushion covers, etc.

13 Sell the Vehicle

Of course, we saved this one for very last. We had good luck going to CarMax and selling our vehicle there. They gave us a reasonable quote that was good for seven days, so we scheduled to come back the day before we took off and sold the vehicle then. It was a very smooth process.

We successfully got through everything on our list before we untied the lines. It took us two weeks from the time we quit our jobs, to the day we sailed away on January 20, 2023. A couple of the items we left for after we sailed away include the following:

• Water Maker – We have a water maker on board, however, a marina in a river is not an ideal place to run it. We have tested the water maker in the past by running clean fresh water through it and then pickling it, however, we had never tested it with salt water. 
• Fix Shower Window Hatch – the window opens, but will not stay open and flops down.
• Bahamas Pet Permit – I first needed to get Mangaux up to date on all of his vaccines, which I did before we left. I will need this paperwork to apply for the Bahamas Pet Permit. I will use Wellington, and will provide more information on what this process entails and my experience with it in a separate post.
  • Update: Here is the article about Bringing a Dog to the Bahamas. Once we understood the process, it went smoothly and we had no issues with Customs or Immigration.

The time between quitting our jobs and sailing away felt rather hectic. We felt like we had an ever-growing list of things to accomplish. Mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness were ever present, as well as a bit of sadness to be moving away from family and friends. Creating a list and putting it to a schedule really helped us feel more organized and accomplished as we worked through the list.

Punchlist Items before Sailing Away Updates:

It’s been eight months since we left the dock. I’m very thankful for the port window fix working so well (no leaks!) and all of the prep we did with our food provisioning and laundry.

In regards to food provision, we did another major provisioning just before leaving for the Bahamas, and I’m glad we did. Boy, is food expensive over there! Check out Helpful Tips for Provisioning for the Bahamas to learn more about all the grocery stores we found once in the Bahamas, including a link to a spreadsheet where I tracked all the food I bought over there, where I bought it and the cost of each item.

We have been able to test the water maker in Pensacola and Tampa Bay. All seems to be working well with it, although it does still have a hint of an odor from the lines as it sat pickled for three years. We really put it to the test in the Keys and the Bahamas, and it works like a champ, getting readings as low as 150 ppm with no odor or taste.

As it goes with spare parts, the first thing that breaks is something we don’t have a spare part for. The 300 Amp fuse for one of our two house batteries blew, which means we only have one house battery to operate off of. When we were in Pensacola, our friends were kind enough to meet us and take us to get a new fuse, and all is back to good. I hope you enjoyed reading about what we worked on before setting sail. I would love to hear from you and your experiences and feedback.

Live your dream,