Tag: West Marine

Boat Baby On The Move

We have reached a new milestone as W approaches her first birthday: climbing.

This child. Good lord. She isn’t walking yet, but has refused to allow her lack of bipedal mobility to slow her down. Capable of traversing the boat from v-berth to aft cabin in a mere 3 seconds, our speed crawler leaves a path of destruction in her wake. Nothing is safe on tables or settee couches. This week she figured out how to get up onto our bed, and already has her sights set on her next challenge: the stairs.

Favorite games this week include standing on couches and pulling her books down, emptying Mom’s closet, terrorizing the dog (who can no longer escape up high and out of reach), and knocking the fruit basket down.

To make the cockpit and deck a safe place to explore (and lower Mom’s blood pressure) we got this child sailing harness from West Marine. It gives her the freedom to move without us worrying about her going overboard. We haven’t used it sailing yet (and will probably use it in combination with a life jacket while we are underway) but it has been great at the dock for some outside playtime. My sister’s response when I sent this photo to my family: “Oh how cute. Is she a rescue?”

harness

Just as we figure out this stage, in a blink she will be walking! And with it a whole new set of challenges. We are loving every minute of it, though, and feel lucky to view the world through her curious eyes. Nothing holds this “Go Go Go” baby back!

Love,

Taylor, Conor, and W

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming

Back row. Middle seat. Packed plane. Baby and dog. By myself. Never again.

I got so many stares as I lugged everything through the airport. TSA actually pulled me out of security to put me in a special line because I didn’t have enough hands to bring both dog and baby through the metal detector. To quote, “We’ve never dealt with this before.” Yes, I am a crazy lady. I understand.

In all seriousness, both W and Scout were absolute CHAMPS and I am so proud of them. Such a longgggg travel day, but the fact that Dad was waiting for us on the other end got us through. W definitely remembered the boat– her eyes got huge when her stroller wheels hit the dock, and then she started cracking up when she saw the boat! We had to deal with a few surprises, though, after being gone for over a month.

The first night back on the boat the shore power kept tripping. At 4am Conor figured out the problem: Our power cord was corroded where it hooked up to our boat and we needed to replace both the fitting and the cord. So the next day Conor drove to New Bern to get the parts while W and I made the best of no AC. Then his car decided to die in the West Marine parking lot.

What could we do but laugh? Broken car, broken boat. Both are fixed now, but it was quite the homecoming. He fixed the power cord hookup by removing the old, burned out hookup (easy) and installing the new one (hard). Aligning all the pieces and screwing everything in correctly was challenging, but mostly he was nervous dealing with such an important power source. Tip: make sure ALL power is off on the boat (even batteries) before attempting to replace. Use a digital multimeter to double check that there is 0 electrical current coming from the hookup. Here’s the old versus new piece:

electrical short

In fun news, it was one year ago this weekend that we did the survey for our boat! We had no idea what we were doing or what was in store. I compare that experience to Conor diagnosing and fixing an electrical problem all on his own, and I am so proud. Conor especially has become quite the handyman and DIY expert. He even bought a giant textbook about electrical engineering!

Our to-do list for this summer is a mile long: brightwork, canvas cleaning, anchor chain marking, hull scrubbing…sigh. A little TLC after such a harsh winter. At least we have a year’s worth of experience under our belt now, and it isn’t so overwhelming to tackle it all. Our plan is to FINALLY take her out over Memorial Day weekend and get back into the swing of things. It will be W’s first sail, and I can’t wait to see how she does!

Love,

Taylor, Conor, and W