Scraping off old silicone after removing the portlight

There’s nothing more annoying than the steady drip of water on you when you’re enjoying a good book in your boat’s vee berth. I’ve had leaky portlights for months, and I’ve been reluctant to  dive in and just fix them. In an effort to start small and cheap with my projects after months of neglecting Blue Magic, this seemed like the perfect project to start with. And so far, so good. I’ve completed two windows after this last weekend and have three more to go. The process is pretty simple, but very time consuming. My first portlight took some trial and error and was completed over a period of 3 days. The second one was completed in about a day, and I think the third can be down to 6-8 hours. All of my portlights are the Beckson 5×12″ portlights, which actually aren’t that great. If I had the money I’d upgrade them, but for now rebedding will have to do!

Here’s how I go about doing each portlight:

1.) Using a putty knife(and a hammer if necessary), I carefully remove the outer trim tab on the portlight. The outer trim tab is just like a decorative frame on window. On Beckson ports, there is just one one other main part, the portlight itself. So once again I carefully work around the edge of the portlight and get that removed as well. Sometimes you have to work from both the outside and the inside of the portlight to make sure you are disrupting all of the silicone bonding the portlight to the boat.

2.) Blue tape is my friend on this project. Immediately after I take off the outer trim tab, I wrap the outer trim tab’s upper right corner in blue tape. I do this so I easily know the proper orientation of the trim tab when I install it again later.

3.) Now comes the most annoying part. Scraping away all the old silicone. This is part that takes a while, but you want to get rid of ALL of it. I use a combination of putty knife and razor blades to do this.

Epoxied holes around the first portlight. Yes, that’s a lot extra holes!

4.) Now if you’re boat is anything like mine, you might have a few additional steps before rebedding. When I removed my portlights, it became very obvious to me that at some point there had been a different brand of portlight on the boats, and there were a LOT of old holes left behind the trim tab. All these holes have the potential for water to enter through them and cause delamination. Delamination is where your core slowly rots from water intrusion and there’s separation between the layers that hold your cabin top or deck together. Unfortunately, I found delamination on both of my windows so far. It’s not the end of the world though. When you find a hole you no longer need, the right answer is to fill it with epoxy. As you can see with the picture on the right, I had quite a few holes to fill on the first portlight.

5.) I also used epoxy to bond the delaminated portions of the port sill back together as well. Just mix up your epoxy with some thickener, use a syringe or brush and ensure epoxy is placed in an crevices along your sill. Then get some clamps and hold the delaminated portions together until the epoxy dries.

6.) Before I remounted the windows, I went ahead and re-lined the edges with blue tape. When I installed the window again, I did it without silicone first. Then I took a razor blade and cut along the blue tape so I had a perfect outline of the portlight. That way, when silicone seeps out along the edges when you rebed it, you can use the blue tape to easily clean it up.

7.) While Beckson recommends nothing but silicone for rebedding, after a little research I went with a hybrid silicone product called LifeSeal. The nice thing about LifeSeal is is that is not as finicky about bonding with old silicone, so any trace amounts that might have been left shouldn’t cause any issues when you reinstall the windows.

8.) Make sure you put silicone (or LifeSeal) around each bolt as well during reinstallation, and don’t tighten down completely on the bolts until the silicone has dried somewhat, or you will force too much excess out.

9.) Last but not least, blast your portlight with a hose to check for any leaks!

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Jim on lookout as we head for the anchorage

So looking back at my posts so far, I realized I mixed up my days, because there’s an extra night that I didn’t factor in. I actually started work on Monday, not Tuesday (yes, I changed the previous post). What this means is that we originally left from Savannah on Thursday, arrived in Beaufort that night, and realized we had a problem on Friday with the Drive Saver. We were essentially stuck in Beaufort for the day while we waited for the shipment to arrive on Saturday.

So Saturday rolls around and the Drive Saver is nowhere to be seen. The UPS truck typically shows up and drops everything off by 8am, but today there was no Drive Saver in sight. While we were loving our time in Beaufort, I really believed at this point for the first time that we wouldn’t make it to Charleston. Luckily, the mechanic that ordered it for us checked again at noon and the part had arrived. We managed to leave Beaufort by early afternoon on Saturday.

The super moon at anchor

There was one factor that I had not considered: super moon. Super moon, in case you don’t remember, was when the moon was full and at it’s closest point to the Earth in ages. Besides the moon being enormous in the sky, it also resulted in even stronger tides. Did I mention my engine didn’t seem to be acting right once we got underway on the Intracoastal? In fact, it was barely puttering at full throttle. There were several scary times when it felt like it was about to die. Blue Magic was essentially puttering along at half her power, and the currents were vicious. Our speed was reduced to 2-2.5 knots of motoring. By the time we had motored half the day, we were nowhere near Charleston. In fact we barely cleared the St Helena Sound before finding an awesome anchorage off of the Edisto River. The night was quiet, the super moon was rising, and we were alone in our anchorage for the most part. A few nice houses were situated on an island on our stern, and we were surrounded by marsh everywhere else. Anchoring out is one of my favorite activities, right up there with sailing the boat itself, and we had a great time watching the super moon rise and drinking a few beers before we went to bed.

I was awakened a few hours later to a horrific storm, with wind whipping strongly and lightning strikes all around us. Blue Magic felt fine, but the boat was also swinging a lot in the strong winds. If there’s one thing I can’t emphasize enough, set your anchor, let it sink, then turn on your engine again and really drive it into the mud. I didn’t do that last step. While I had a CQR anchor set in a mud bottom, I did not dig it in again after letting it settle. As a result, when we woke up in the morning, the houses on my stern were a lot closer than when we went to bed. Another lesson out of this: set your GPS to trigger an alarm if your anchor is dragging. Luckily the boat moving a few feet was the worst that happened, but it could have ended with a stuck or pinned boat.

We continued to fight the tides as we slowly made our way with the crippled engine to Charleston. Luckily the engine was getting enough fuel that it didn’t choke out on us. I thought it was an issue with our throttle connected to the engine, so when we attempted to alter the throttle on the engine itself, black smoke spat out the back. Knowing that black smoke isn’t ideal, we cut back on the engine and let it keep puttering slowly against the tide. It would be another week or two before I finally figured out it was a fuel flow issue, luckily there was enough flow to keep us going.

On that Sunday, as I looked at the charts and looked at my watch, I realized I wasn’t going to make it to Charleston. As far as options before Charleston, we didn’t have many. John’s Island seemed like our best bet, but even that was a long way off at the pace we were going. We had nothing but rivers before us, and we had passed the last sound before Charleston harbor. There was only one thing we could to add another knot of speed: throw up every sail on the boat. Thankfully, it worked. While tacking up creeks and rivers on the Intracoastal looks a little ridiculous, it managed to get us to John’s Island by nightfall. We pulled into St John’s Yacht Harbor at 9pm, which was just short of our goal, but close enough that the boat was safely in Charleston. I drove back to Savannah that night to get ready for a 630am flight to Denver that morning.

I learned a lot during this trip, and looking back on it now, we actually had a lot of fun. While a lot more went wrong than I wanted it to, the boat arrived safely and handled itself like a champ during our misadventures. A trip like that reminded me why I got involved in sailing in the first place. While there was struggle and more stress than there needed to be, there is no cooler way than explore the world on a sailboat, even on a short trip from Savannah to Charleston.

One of the first tall ships we saw

So we took off Friday morning (around 8) with plans to make it to Charleston no later than Sunday evening at the very worst. That gave us roughly three days. When I took the Intracoastal the entire way from Charleston to Savannah the previous year, I did the trip in a leisurely two days. With an offshore component, I figured the trip would go even quicker this time, which would allow us more time to enjoy sites like the town of Beaufort, South Carolina along the way. I didn’t have to fly out to work until Monday morning.

Our trip started off with some pretty awesome sights. We happened to be leaving Savannah just as the Savannah Tall Ships Festival was going on, so we saw several tall ships coming and going as we were headed offshore via the Savannah river. When I flipped through old photographs, I realized one of the ships that passed us was the HMS Bounty, which would later end up sinking in Hurricane Sandy.

R.I.P. HMS Bounty

Once we were about two miles off the coast, we tacked the boat and headed north on a beam reach. There was very little wind so we ended up motor sailing for significant periods of time. At times we were averaging no more than 2 knots. Despite the lack of wind there was some roll in the seas and with the direction we were headed the waves were hitting us on our starboard side.

Waves hitting the broad side of the the boat are some of the most uncomfortable, and our first-time sailor and skilled mountain climber Mike was not enjoying it. After a while he decided to take a nap in the cockpit to help with the rocking motion. Hence, the lack of photographs for this portion of our journey. Luckily, everyone held their lunch. It was fairly uneventful as we worked our way up to Port Royal Sound for the next few hours. The trip was going slower than expected with the lack of wind, and as we pulled into Port Royal Sound we figured we wouldn’t make it to Beaufort until around 7pm. We radioed the marina and let them know we were coming, and the dockmaster informed us he had an entire stretch of about 100 feet of dock where we could put the boat “anywhere.” He also reminded us to “be careful about the currents” when we were coming in.

Town of Beaufort, SC

Having sailed boats in Savannah for nearly three years, I was used to strong currents where the tidal change was typically 6-7 feet a day. That being said, I can attest that Beaufort’s currents felt even faster than Savannah. Positioned between two sharp bends in the Beaufort River, the marina’s current is not directly parallel with the docks as you approach. Instead, it’s about 30 degrees off from the docks, making it easy for a full keel boat to get pushed away if it doesn’t position itself close enough. Especially a full keel boat with a relatively inexperienced skipper

I was approaching the inside of the dock when I noticed the boat drifting further inland and into the dock. I rapidly shifted the boat between forward and reverse to reorient the boat and get it back in line to approach the dock when all of a sudden it felt like none of my shifting was working. Suddenly very frustrated and watching my boat rapid heading towards collision with several other boats in the marina, several people scrambled out of their boats and yelled at me to toss them lines. As I worked the forward and reverse with no effect, I never felt so helpless in controlling my boat. I couldn’t believe that Blue Magic’s 30 horse engine was having so much trouble responding to the current. It was a very humbling experience. No matter how much I revved the engine, the tide had the boat, and there seemed little that I could do.

Luckily, I saw an open slip that I was drifting towards and used the flow of the current on the rudder to line up as best as possible with the dock. People were shouting and cursing at me to slow the boat down and throw it in reverse, but once again, my efforts seemed to have no effect. Miraculously, we didn’t hit any boats coming in, managing only to slam into the dock in front of us with a hard crack. Luckily Blue Magic is a hardy boat, and the only damage to the boat at this point was some scraped paint and my wounded ego. After we made sure everything was secure, we elected to get drunk in Beaufort for the night and head out the next morning.

The busted DriveSaver. Note the disconnect between transmission and shaft.

The following day I quickly learned why I had so much trouble coming into dock the previous night. In my efforts to correct my initial approach on where we were supposed to dock, my panicked shifting between forward and reverse had broken my DriveSaver, which is designed to act as a barrier and protect the boat’s transmission by absorbing torque from the propeller shaft. Unfortunately, while it saves the transmission, I lose the ability to shift gears. When you’re in heavy current, this is less than ideal. My ego restored, I no longer felt bad about not being able to dock my boat.

The only problem was there was no replacement DriveSaver in town, and it was a large gap to close between the shaft and the transmission. Frankly, Beaufort was a fun town and everyone seemed good with an extra day to do the job right and get another DriveSaver shipped overnight. After that incident, I was certainly not in any mood to NOT have one. Besides, while we would be pushing it close on time, I still thought it was possible to make it to Charleston the following day. At the very least, everyone was good with a Monday arrival if we had to do it, and I didn’t have to fly out until Tuesday morning. Blue Magic and crew still looked good on time.

Jim (left) and I reviewing the charts again early in our trip

So I’ve got some serious catching up to do based on where I left off. The most interesting trip I’ve been on was getting my boat to Charleston from Savannah. It was supposed to be a relatively straightforward trip, but the minute I assumed that I set myself up for failure. Before I started my new job, I knew I had to get Blue Magic to Charleston, and I wanted to make a fun trip out of it. You can typically go offshore and reach Charleston from Savannah in about 12-14 hours on a good day. I had a little bit more time to get my boat up there so I decided to compromise and planned for 2 days instead. I would do a mixture of offshore and Intracoastal Waterway. The plan was to head out of Savannah via the Savannah River, go offshore and come back in at the Port Royal Sound. This would allow us to check out a pretty sweet town for boaters in Beaufort. We originally anchored in Beaufort when I brought the boat down from Charleston, but I had never docked at the marina there. The town literally backs up right next to the marina and it’s easy walking distance to everything you want to see from there. So our plan was to reach Beaufort in the first day of our sail, spend the night there checking out the town, and then head up to Charleston via the Intracoastal Waterway the rest of the day.

I had 2 crew members to help me out, Jim and Mike, who would both be crucial for the trip. Jim was a fellow sailor I met in Savannah when our boats were next to each other at the dock. He’d taken extensive US Sailing courses and done a charter trip to the BVIs, so he definitely brought a little cruising experience to the team. Jim would act as a navigator and all around encyclopedia during the trip. The other guy, Mike, was an Army friend of mine always down for a new adventure. Had he been sailing before? Nope, but he’d climbed mountains before, which meant he could tie some pretty sweet knots. He would be become the badass deckhand and photographer for the trip.

The original plan was to leave the weekend of April 20th-22nd. I didn’t start work until May 1st, so this gave me plenty of time to get the boat up there even if we were delayed a day or two, as long as the boatyard stayed on schedule. Oh yeah did I mention the boatyard? I had a few random projects for them to finish up before we left, with the main one being the bane of my existence for quite some time on this blog: the windlass. It seemed pretty straightforward, we had all the parts, we just needed a little more muscle and some machining to get the twisted shaft out.

Mike taking the helm on his first sailing trip ever

When I showed them the windlass though, they pointed out a more serious problem. The windlass’s motor was so corroded any time you touched it it would dissolved into rust colored powder, which meant the minute we started messing with the windlass, it was all going to go come apart on us. When we attempted the work anyway, that’s exactly what happened. Ouch! After all that wasted time with parts, I ended up having to replace the windlass on short notice. Unfortunately this meant we would miss our opportunity to leave on time. That meant I would have to do the trip with my crew the weekend of April 28th, just 3 days before I had to catch a flight and show up for my new job in Denver, Colorado. Three days didn’t offer much wiggle room. But what could possibly go wrong?

Wow. It’s been eight long months since I turned my back on this blog and stopped publishing content. The best part? My last post was titled “Back in the Saddle” and I talked about all the sailing posts that were going to start appearing again. And then a week went by. And another week. And then it got to the point that I would get mad coming to this page and looking at how long it had been since my last post. I walked away from this blog and told myself I would just focus on my sailing and not write about it all the time.

But then a funny thing happened. I started to get annoyed with sailing too. The boat felt like a constant work in progress. Little things started breaking on it, and I started visiting it less and less. Even though I lived only 5 minutes from it. I was out of the Army, moving to a new city, and learning a totally new job where I found myself traveling just as I was trying to get my feet on the ground. The final straw came when I left my boat for about 3 weeks during a period of heavy rain. I walked into my cabin with my “to do” list in hand only to be greeted with water all over the cabin sole. One of my bilge pumps had failed and managed to drain my batteries completely. Swiping my card and looking at the receipt for four new batteries was honestly a pretty lousy feeling at that point. I seriously considered listing the boat for sale right then and there, and mulled it over for a good two weeks.

What was the point? I was in a new job now, trying to find my way with so many other things going on in my life. All of a sudden the dream I had to take off and cruise the world seemed further away than ever once I realized how much work had to be done still and how broke I was. Blue Magic didn’t deserve to have an owner that was just going to keep her at the dock all the time with no intention of taking her on an adventure. For the money I could get back from selling her, I could probably go travel the world sans boat for quite some time.

Those two weeks really made me question who I was and what I really wanted out of life. Was the boat and my planned cruise just an outlet for my current frustrations with my job in the Army? Did I just do it because I needed an outlet and an escape from the Army each day? Now that I was out of the Army, did the whole reason for me going down this path just evaporate? Those questions and more swirled through my head.

In the end, I discovered the boat and sailing really means far more to me than an excuse to escape my daily life. While that might have been the reason at some point in my life, I’ve come to accept that Blue Magic and I are here to stay, journey in the next year or not. Once I realized that, I found myself going to the boat more and more once I realized that. Some things have changed. I used to view boat projects with frustration, and it was a part of sailing that I never wanted to accept. In my mind, every day doing projects was a day that was denying the opportunity to take the boat out. Now it’s different. I actually enjoy boat projects now, even the tedious ones like rebedding all my portlights or revarnishing the exterior. I have a new sense of pride in Blue Magic, I see the projects as something that improves my quality of life on the boat and makes cruising the local area more comfortable in the end. Plus, I’m on a boat! How can you complain when you’re working on a boat?

So I’ve got some catching up to do on this blog. I’m going to go back in time on my next post and relate some of the experiences I’ve had with Blue Magic the past few months. I’m also going to spend some time catching up on some fellow sailing blogs because sadly I gave that up to for awhile! I hope everyone is well and having a good holiday season, I’m looking forward to catching up with my fellow sailors.

Where I'm headed next.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted to this blog, but the last few weeks have probably been some of the busiest/most stressful I’ve been in the last few years. Transitioning out of the Army while looking for a job that matches your personality, lifestyle, and interests is never easy. I have been on planes, trains, and automobiles the past few weeks looking for great jobs that will allow me to keep sailing and enjoying the South.

Luckily, it all worked out. I managed to find an awesome job with a very creative and open-minded insurance company. I start in May and have four weeks off before then, so the plan is to take Blue Magic south for at least 2 weeks in April and explore the Georgia barrier islands one last time before I make a short trip north to Charleston. With that in mind, I have a 3 day weekend this week to tackle the windlass and water systems to get them fully working once and for all. The weather has been absolutely beautiful down here and it’s going to feel good to dive back into the boat after quite a few weeks of hiatus.

There’s a lot I love about my new job. The people I work with seem great, the job seems challenging and rewarding, there seems to be a lot of opportunities for growth, and they seem incredibly flexible and open minded to new ideas. How flexible are we talking about? For one, they are open to the idea of remote working, in fact a substantial part of their workforce works remotely. This was huge to me because it allows me to earn an income in a lower cost of living area, and it drastically improves quality of life as well. It’s going to be a dramatic departure from the Army, but I think it’s the perfect open-minded kind of company that I was looking for following the Army.

This weekend the plan is to hit projects on Blue Magic on Friday and Saturday, and then take her out for another sail on Sunday. Also, does anyone out there use a GoPro2 camera? I am thinking about biting the bullet and rigging it on the bow or dinghy davits for some good sailing footage. More to follow, but I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on the camera. You can check more about the GoPro here.

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I wonder how many of these sit idle from projects?

Let’s just say that sailboat maintenance and I have not always seen eye to eye with one another. When I sailed my friend’s boat for the first time returning from Iraq, it had been beautifully maintained by the previous owner and  there was nothing stopping us from cruising through the water those first few weekends. When I bought my Catalina 25, I carried the naive thought of a maintenance free boat from my friend’s brief experience. I was quickly humbled when we took her out on her first voyage and found the outboard die on us as we strapped down the sails and prepared for our final approach to the docks. A week later my anchor light (permanently affixed atop my mast) burned out. And then came the leaks – slowly at first, and then a series of new ones appeared as I discovered more about my boat. I didn’t go looking for maintenance, maintenance found me. Progress was slow at first and it seemed like I was constantly asking the boat yard in those days for the best way to do a job, but I eventually fixed all those issues along with a few new ones. My Catalina maintenance break-in was the perfect precursor to my time with Blue Magic.

Flash forward to last weekend. When it came to maintenance and projects, I finally felt completely at ease. Using an exploded diagram off of the Lofrans website, I tore apart my windlass and found out where it had broken during our trip through Beaufort.

Luckily it was a twisted key and I was able to fix the problem by swapping it out with a new one. I wasn’t comfortable with another piece that had twisted as well that made putting the windlass together awkward and unnatural, so I went ahead and ordered that part on Tuesday, and hopefully it arrives before the weekend ends. But depressing the deck buttons and watching the windlass spin again was a satisfying sight.

This is what a 2 speed winch looks like with the top off - this was only the beginning.

For me, accomplishing a project like that is usually enough for me to call it good and go sailing on a normal weekend, but I didn’t stop there. The last time I was out sailing, one of my winches didn’t seem to be pulling my jib sheets as easily as it should have been. In fact, all my winches felt rough and difficult to handle compared to what I’m used to. So I hit Google again and got the disassembly instructions for my Lewmar winches and went to work taking them apart. I gave all the parts a good wipedown with mineral oil and re-greased where the instructions told me to. My worst winch had a broken pawl, so that’s yet another little piece that should be arriving by the end of this week.

Alas I can’t say I feel like Pirsig and his motorcyle quite yet. There’s definitely one type of project I love to hate: plumbing. I am nearly done with the infernal fresh project, and I made a a lot of progress on it as well, but only after I played with the windlass and winches! I hope to have a working system jury rigged this weekend until a new Lexan cover I ordered comes in for final installment. If this warmer weather holds for a few more weeks or spring comes early, it shouldn’t be too long before I’m ready for a bigger trip.

Let me know where you’re at with a few of your own boat projects. For those of you in the northern latitudes where your boat’s hauled out for the winter, I imagine you’ve got a great opportunity to knock some projects out on the hard.

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The last sunset on Blue Magic in 2011

Well we’ve finally arrived at the epic conclusion of my annual review series. Spanning an epic total of four posts and deviating from my traditional strictly sailing content, this has been a gratifying and useful exercise for me to conduct, and I hope to to make it a regular tradition at the end of each year. So far I’ve talked about what I did well this last year, and what I didn’t do so well this year. Now I’m going to talk about where I hope to be by the end of 2012. I don’t see this as the traditional New Year’s resolution, for me, those have never worked and are usually quickly forgotten. Rather than set a specific resolution for the year, I prefer an overarching theme and vision for my life in this upcoming year. I’ve dubbed this year’s theme the Year of Big Changes, and here’s why:

1.) A New Job – When June 2012 hits, my Army paycheck is finished, and I’ll hopefully find myself in a new job that I love or writing for even more clients. After 5 years of indentured servitude, it’s important for me to find a job that I enjoy doing. I think finding a job or doing work that I enjoy is far more important than the paycheck or benefits I earn (which don’t get me wrong, are still important as well!).

2.) A New Place to Live – Where I live is almost as important to me as what I do for work. I have no desire to take a job where I live in a place that I don’t enjoy. With my future cruising plans and the way sailing has become a big part of my life, I can’t see living anywhere that’s not close to a beach and the coast. Up until about eight months ago I would not have minded staying in Savannah, but I now realize it’s time for me to move on and seek bigger pastures. Savannah’s a great area in a lot of ways, but the city is just too small for what I need, and I’m looking for a place where the sailing community is bigger and a little more prominent.

3.) A Bigger Blog – I’ve got big plans for Extra Latitude this year. As my cruising plans ramp up, so will this blog. I’m looking forward to using a lot more video and photography of my sailing trips and projects in the near future, and introducing you to a few other sailing bloggers as well. Also I’m working on a free ebook that I hope to have completed by the time I’m out of the Army.

4.) A written novel – I’ve had a story that I began to work on about two months ago that has very little to do with sailing, although elements are definitely in there. With this year of big changes, I’d like to complete my first novel, whether it gets published or not. I’m ready for a cathartic release after my transition out of military service, and a book seems like an ideal vehicle for doing that.

5.) A Big Trip – The BVIs or the Bahamas, I’m not sure which one it will be yet, but Blue Magic and I are taking a big cruising trip one way or another before the year’s out, and this trip will only be the beginning!

What’s your vision for 2012? What do you hope to accomplish and where do you see yourself by the end of 2012? Let me know your thoughts!

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Danish tall ship that visited Savannah this year.

This is a continuation of the annual review that I conducted over the last week. On Tuesday I talked about what went well, and today I’m going to cover where I fell short this year. Next Tuesday I plan to wrap up the Annual Review series with my plans for what I hope to accomplish over the next year. For now, on to the list!

Sailing

Did not challenge myself as much as I should have. While I was pretty good about getting the boat out each month to go sailing, I really didn’t push myself. Most of the sailing with the exception of 2-3 multi day trips consisted of sailing the local Wassaw Sound area. Now that I have a boat that is very comfortable offshore, I need to take it out there more. I also have a few friends that are willing to help if challenging weather conditions are developing, so I can go out and learn how to handle more challenging weather conditions. One good thing about my move to Charleston next year is the fact that I have even easier access to the ocean for offshore practice.

Project progress.  With a new boat that was significantly more complicated than my old one, I’ve had a lot to learn in just how to use everything, let alone fix things. Some of my projects (the plumbing one) took way longer than they should have, but it was my first time doing it too. I’ve deliberately taken the approach that I have to learn how to fix and do everything on my own boat, so that if it happens while I’m cruising, I’ll know what needs to be done. Unfortunately I’m not yet in the Bahamas where I can focus on the problem for several days at a time or commiserate with fellow cruisers, so a lot of my work has to be done on the weekends during sailing time or after 6 during the weekdays. Lately I’ve developed a better schedule and mindset when tackling boat projects, and it seems to be going better, but this is definitely a weak spot for me.

Business

Didn’t meet income goals. I definitely had a target side income that I was hoping to have by the end of the year from my micro businesses, and I didn’t reach that goal, not even close. Maybe I walked in with too high expectations to start, but I also know it’s primarily due to the fact that I stopped hustling for certain stretches of time. With my transition out of the Army in March, this is something I foresee becoming a bigger part of my life next year.

Personal

Blogging. Keep a schedule, stay consistent in your content, use attention-getting headlines, etc. While this blog has grown all year, I definitely haven’t put the time into it that I should be. I know when I write a great post and when I write a weaker one. I also believe I’ve done a poor job seeking out and talking to fellow sailing and lifestyle blogs out there. This next year I want to feature several guest posts on this blog and guest post for other blogs as well.

Diet. I’ve always been the skinny kid who could eat anything and never feel the consequences. No longer. My eyes near fell out of my head when I was weighed for my recent surgery. I haven’t really changed what I’ve eaten over the years, so I think my metabolism has finally caught up. I want to eat healthier and get my weight down to a more reasonable level again next year.

Family. I’ve been saving up a lot of my “vacation time” to give myself a buffer of a few weeks paid leave when I get out of the Army, and I realized when I was visiting my family over Christmas that this year I’ve seen a little less of them. Frankly it sucks, and I’m going to work on trying to see my parents and sister more frequently next year.

Looking at this, almost everything on it comes down to one factor: effort. I’ve definitely slacked in some areas this year, but at least with this review I know what I’ve to got to work on.

How is your own annual review coming along? What are some goals either sailing or personally related that you hope to accomplish?

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Rock 'N Roll 1/2 Marathon

Well my week of reflection is over and I’m going to be sharing with you in this post and the next two a few of the results of my annual review. We’ll hit what went well over the last year in this post, what didn’t go well in the next post, and then finally what I’m hoping to achieve in my “transition year” next year. For now, onward to what I kicked ass at this year:

Sailing

1.) Getting a serious cruising sailboat. The closer I got to actually purchasing a serious sailboat for cruising, the more nervous and uncertain I got about it. Was I taking too big of a chunk out of my savings? Did I really want to commit to this? Did I love sailing enough to do this trip? If I want to travel, wouldn’t it be easier to just buy a few plane tickets and hang out in the countries I wanted to see? These doubts and more swirled around my head constantly before and during my purchase. Afterward though? I am really happy with my decision. Having the cruiser has focused me on sailing and preparing for an extended cruise, and I couldn’t be happier with the choice I’ve made so far. I wanted a durable boat that could withstand the open ocean and it looks like I’ve found one. Having the boat is a huge step that makes your sailing dream look possible, and my purchase helped prioritize everything else in my life (new job, possible new areas to live).

2.) Meeting my “Go out and sail” goal. I’ve said a few times on this blog that no matter how much you’re mired in boat projects, find the time to sail your boat or at least a boat. With the exception of two months this year, I met my personal goal of going out and sailing at least 2 weekends a month. Sailing that frequently definitely helped increase my comfort and skills in sailing. I did my first single handed sail this year, and also got to crew on a lot of race boats. I’m excited to keep this goal up and increase my sailing next year.

Business

3.) I made money on my own for the first time. So far in my short life, I’ve always made money solely from an employer. That changed for the first time this last year. My goal is to make enough money during an extended trip that I can cover my cruising cost, and to that end I’ve started experimenting with mobile businesses that can be run from anywhere. While I’ll have more to say about this on Thursday, I did manage to be profitable with two side businesses I started this year, and I’m pretty stoked about pulling that off. This is definitely something I want to keep growing next year.

Personal Well Being

4.) I ran a half marathon. I’ve never run anything close to 13.1 miles before at a decent time, but I trained up and pulled it off for the first time this year. It felt great and I’m hoping to complete my first full marathon this upcoming year.

Overall not bad for a year where I didn’t start with any many goals and was uncertain if I wanted to take the plunge on a sailboat or not. Next post I’ll share with you a little bit more about where I think I could have done better.