How did we ever live without a dodger?

Our beautiful new dodger & cover!

Seriously, having a dodger makes all the difference, when you live on a boat!! I don't know how we survived on our last two boats without it. That's not true, I know how we did it, actually. With our second boat, we knew we were not keeping her for a lifetime and since you don't really make that money back, we thought we'd just wait until we bought the forever boat, before we really started throwing money around.

Without the dodger

The dodger, sans cover

Now that we have all new canvas on the boat, the rest of it is really looking drab! Time for me to start back up on the teak, and get the rest of the trim looking as nice as it does around the cockpit area!!

More recently, I have been working on creating a design to go with our boat name. You may remember the t-shirts I designed last year...we both liked the design so much so, that I have now started branding everything on the boat, from, t-shirts to coolers to cups....

Irie t-shirt design

It has taken some time, since I am not exactly a tech savvy person, much less a designer, but I have figured out a way to use my design, from the shirts, and keep it going throughout all other items on the boat...

close-up of the new & old YETI tumblers w/my design decal

Y'all know how much I love my Seafoam Yeti, right?? Well, when I heard they were bringing back the seafoam, for a limited time, you better believe I was trying my best to figure out a way to get rid of the used, brown one we had picked up from the resale shop and replace it with a much prettier color! As luck would have it, Joe told me he wanted to sell the big one (the downtown-doo-doo-brown one) and get a smaller-ish one, that fit better. So we did! And, now our back porch looks a lot better.....

Matching YETI's on the back porch

close-up of the new Tundra 35 w/my design decal

close-up of the Roadie 20 w/my design decal

Continuing with what has now become our "unofficial" boat colors...at least for the exterior (and maybe a little in the interior too).... I finally convinced hubs to hang up the hammock he bought me, for Christmas! Ahh, so relaxing....It is my new favorite spot on the boat!! I even got my first sunburn, over the weekend, from laying in the hammock for too long, but it was worth it!!

Chillaxin' in the hammock while Joe is installing the windlass.... I call it supervising ;)

February Recap....

Aside from all the work we were doing on the boat, we had a couple family visits and then just to mix things up a bit, I had bronchitis for about two weeks. Ugh! Luckily, I'm back to feeling like a functional adult, again! Needless to say, February was a busy month for us!!

We did have our jib sail professionally washed & restitched. And, you can watch the video clip over on our Facebook page, of us putting the sail back on.

As you can see in the images to the left, it was a pretty big task folding it up on the dock. Then the middle photo shows it spread out on the floor at the sail loft. 

A different kind of ice pack, but it works just the same!

So, sometimes you still smack your head! And in those instances, you put a nice cold can of Coke on your fresh new head wound!  Both, Joe and I, have hit our heads more times than I care to remember! Or maybe, we've knocked our heads so much so, that we can't remember! Ha!! 

Remember how I was saying in my last post, how I was so happy I didn't have to crouch down to walk through our hallway? Yeah well, you still need to duck when you walk through the doorway of said hallway. At this point in time, the words, 'stupid boat' usually come out of my mouth! But I don't really mean it, I mean, not to the point where I want to move off of the boat. It's just like anything else you hit. You're not gonna blame yourself for not paying attention, you're going to blame whatever hurt you! Right? That's not just me, is it?!  

Look at that beautiful teak trim! ...{patting myself on the back} :)

I finally finished the teak work around the cockpit and it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself!
I am using a product called Awlwood by AwlGrip. This is my first time using this product, and refinishing teak, for that matter, but so far so good! I am really liking how easy it is to work with! When we first heard about this product, the reviews were a bit confusing, the people that (you would hire to) refinish teak, said they didn't like it, but the boater's that had it on their teak, were very impressed by it. We quickly learned, that it wasn't at all that it was a bad product, quite the opposite actually. People that refinish teak (usually with varnish) don't like Awlwood because they are losing business over it. You see, varnished teak, typically has to be redone annually to keep it looking pristine. Therefore, they are pretty much guaranteed, a repeat customer. However, the Awlwood lasts up to 5 years before needing to be refinished, hence the dislike. I, on the other hand, have really enjoyed seeing the progress, which is good, because I have a lot more teak to do....here's hoping it continues to be a fun-ish job!  

New memory foam mattress in the aft cabin!

We invested in a real mattress for the aft bedroom....No more sleepless nights!!! Most boat beds are not the same size as typical mattresses, which means you have to have a custom bed made to fit. However, we got lucky with this one, because it is essentially, an extra long full. We went up to a local mattress store and bought this memory foam mattress for almost half the price of the custom made ones. They only had the regular full in stock and said they could order the extra long one, but we chose to just get the regular length, so that we didn't have to wait a week, for the other one to come in. Plus, it is a lot easier making the bed when you have a little room to maneuver.

Looky Looky what we're getting! 

And, here's a little preview of what you'll see coming up in the next blog post! I am so totally stoked about this add-on!!!! :)
I can't wait to show you the finished look! Yay