HOME MADE CUSTOM SUN SHADE

 

The hot sun does damage to many items on our boat but gauges can be very expensive to replace. We sent these gauges to be fixed which saved us hundreds of dollars. See the before and after photos below. Gauge Savers did a fantastic job, we highly recommend them.

Our back cockpit is in the hot sun every afternoon and we get to watch the sun set. However, we have to close all our curtains and maybe even put the air conditioner on. We usually put up a sun shade we have folded and bungeed onto our railings. The next best thing to owning a sewing machine is having friends with one. We went to our friends' boat Daruma and Paul got a quick lesson on the machine. All the prep work the night before with double sided tape paid off. 

After practicing on some fabric, out comes our sun shade material. Paul did a fantastic job and now we can have this sun shade installed and rolled up when not in use. To have this professionally done would have cost over $1,000. Thanks Dave and Traci for letting us use their sewing machine!

Paul said.... "Shannon, take a photo of this stuff and have everyone guess what it is", can you guess? It is actually a bunch of stuff from our water maker. Paul is reinstalling a bunch of stuff from the front of the engine room to the back. This way he does not need to crawl into the engine room and go all the way forward to have access to part of the water maker. Now it is all very handy in the lazarette here in the cockpit. This is a very big deal for Paul. It will save him many steps, oops I mean crawls.

There were a few good sunsets a days ago. Also there has been a few foggy mornings. Down here there are all kinds of weather, even super cold nights where we need heat on and then bam.... we need the air conditioner on.  

I have started a newish craft on the boat. Instead of painting my rocks like I usually do I got lazy and just starting pouring the paint on. After that I have experimented with doing an ocean theme. These rocks actually take no time at all and I love giving or hiding them away. 

A friend on the dock wore this shirt. Aaaah, boaters can relate to this. It is very funny!