We launch Splendido in three days, and the past six weeks have been a whirlwind of activity getting her prepped for the Tahoe sailing season. The theme this spring was, “OK, what really needs to be addressed on a well-loved 31-year old sailboat that has seen lots of use? Fortunately, my mechanical-genius pal Ancil Sigman had plenty of suggestions, as you’ll see below.

The things I intended to fix in the off-season:

• Make a better rope with knots in it to pull up the swim ladder.

The things Ancil heartily encouraged me (and tirelessly helped me) to fix in the off-season:

• We pulled out every inch of the original (but significantly corroded) battery cables and replaced them with beefier, brand-spankin’ new cabling, all nicely heat-shrinked, from the battery bank to the panel to the engine, inverter, etc.
• Upgraded the boat trailer with new running lights, from hitch to taillights.
• Pulled out two bent lifeline stanchions, straightened them, then properly re-bedded and reinstalled them.
• Replaced all the lifelines on the boat.
• Removed the cabin windows that were popping up (hey, 31 years is a pretty good run), re-glued them with 3M VHB tape, and scraped/re-caulked all the windows on the boat.
• Completely rebuilt the Whale Galley Gusher pump with a new service kit (way, way harder and less intuitive than it sounds). First clue: The schematic they provide was way too low-rez to be helpful, and nothing on YouTube™ showed how to do it properly. Even the factory’s customer service lady gave us the wrong instructions. In the end, I had to call on Perplexity.ai to finally spit out the right way to do it.
• While the icebox pump was out, I sanded, cleaned and re-fiberglassed the area under the stove with a couple layers of cloth. Turned out great. 
• Also laid in some fiberglass cloth and epoxy on the stern shower fixture door, which had cracked with age. It looks pretty good now with a little gel coat added.
• Replaced every seacock on the boat with new Forespar® Marelon™ seacocks. This took a ton of work because the handles don’t come off of the new ones, so you have to grind out the cabinetry in the tight spaces so you can screw the new seacocks onto the thru-hulls.
• Replaced the cheap CDI plastic furling drum cover that broke after only two seasons (are you listenin’, CDI?) with a proper metal replacement drum cover which should have been standard issue to begin with. (Replacing this was a major pain).
• Since the mast was down on sawhorses, we took the opportunity to service it from tip to base, checking the sheaves, fasteners, spreaders, boots, wiring, lights, etc. Ancil rigged a gypsum-board lifter to help get the 200-lb. mast back up on the boat. Thank you, Ancil!
• Checked the steering cables looking for fishhooks (there weren’t any — whew!).
• Tried to remove the pinkish stain around the port-side Splendido logo that happened the winter we kept the boat on the hard up at Obexer’s. Tried four or five coats of oxalic acid, several fiberglass cleaning products, Soft Scrub … nothing worked. At best, I got it to lighten maybe 15% or so. Dang.
• Applied gel coat to nicks on the transom and elsewhere in the cabin, then wet-sanded it and polished it up.
• Removed all the original curtains in the boat, soaked them in OxyClean and mild washing soap, re-sewed the hook-and-loop parts that had come undone, and re-attached them. They look great.
• Removed old epoxy spills in the cabin and on deck.
• Used 3M 4200 to glue down the bilge pump and float switch in bilge. Also, finally wired the bilge pump properly to the panel so it operates automatically and manually as well.
• Touched up the bottom paint with blue Total Boat Krypton.
• Put 4-5 coats of PolyGlo (amazing stuff!) on the hull, and now she looks great.

I never did get around to making a better swim ladder rope.

After some rest, I’m looking forward to a relaxing summer of fair winds and smooth sailing! DB