Obsessions are funny things. They sneak up on you. I was thinking I’d be content just to do the very short list of “necessary” fixes and tweaks to Splendido over the winter, and then go sailing. No such luck. In addition to simply adding cotter rings to life lines, rebuilding an older Whale Gusher™ bilge pump, replacing the missing compass, and maybe giving her a good wax and polish, I suddenly found myself obsessed with making her beautiful.

You get to looking around, and you start to see things. I noticed the original wood floor of teak and holly was looking like hell, so I got online and found a really great-looking vinyl product that had the exact look of teak, but without all the maintenance. At first, I tried removing the teak-and-holly slats, but the wood beneath was too fragile, so I fabricated a new subfloor, and that’s where the real fun began.

It all happened innocently enough; I asked my brother-in-law, Tracy, about maybe helping me a bit with the new PlasTeak floor, and about dropping the pads on the trailer so I could sand and re-paint under them. The next thing I know, the boat is in Tracy’s driveway, and we worked together from around 5:30 p.m. to past 10 every night for a week looking things over, testing electrical systems, checking the plumbing system, and installing the new PlasTeak® sole (floor). Fortunately, Tracy is an engineer by training, and as mechanically-inclined as a person can be. He also has, I’ve decided, every tool known to mankind, and what he doesn’t own, we can fabricate out of something else he has. This skill helped immensely when we dropped the pads, as we needed to shore up the rest of the pads that were distributing the 6,400 lbs. of Splendido’s weight. As luck would have it, Tracy had four extra “camper jacks” that allowed us to spread out the load, do our sanding and painting, and get two coats on her wet surfaces. Here’s what she looked like when we finished.

When we moved the boat from her winter storage to Tracy’s house the week before, we were alarmed to discover the trailer “bucking” every time Tracy hit the brakes on his big pickup truck. Having a 13′ high sailboat bucking and ramming a pickup is a scary thing to watch (I was following behind in my Jeep), so we pulled over and found that the trailer’s brake system was out of brake fluid. So, I ran to the nearest auto-parts store and bought a quart, and we topped it off. That seemed to help a little bit, but when we got her parked at Tracy’s, we found that the master cylinder was rusted all to hell and needed to be replaced. Tracy called around and got the parts, and $278 later, we had a new brake system on the trailer. (Or so we believed at the time.)

We left Tracy’s house in northwest Reno at about 6 a.m. on May 14th for our 9 a.m. launch appointment at Tahoe City Marina. We hadn’t driven a mile before the trailer started bucking again. Tracy had blown out, dried, and refilled the brake lines, so we figured it had to be the brake drums seizing up. Since we were basically going uphill all the way, we had little need for massive braking, so we went for it. We arrived safely, stopped by the Lake Forest Coast Guard Station launch to have the boat re-inspected for invasive species (even though she hadn’t been anywhere but Tahoe…the guys who worked on the hull this winter had snipped the Tahoe-Only seal to move the mast. (Don’t get me started). Freshly-armed with a new seal, we motored back to Tahoe City Marina, where the fine folks there lifted her off the trailer, helped step the mast, and let us tie up to finish the commissioning at dockside.

It took a fair amount of trial and error to get everything set up correctly, but we had Catalina’s sort of cryptic instructions (e.g., the mast should be straight both fore and aft and athwartships; the lower shrouds should be neither loose nor tight…) and just took our time. We had a bit of excitement when we were checking out the plumbing; I hadn’t tightened a hose clamp quite tight enough after “airing them out” this winter, and we had a leak where the bilge was filling rather quickly. Fortunately, Tracy got it sealed off, the bilge-pumps worked wonderfully well, and a soggy mess was averted.

About 6 p.m., we called it a day, as the weather was threatening (forecast: big winds and 4-6″ of snow at lake level overnight), and we were pretty bleary after working pretty much non-stop all day. The kind folks at Tahoe City Marina let us tie up Splendido in a slip (complete with spring lines and extra ropes in case of a major blow), and we checked all the systems and put her to bed. She still needs her sails put on and some fine-tuning of her rigging, but all in all, I think she looks great and we’re looking forward to some relaxing cruises as the weather warms.