Son of a Sailor

When you live onboard a sailboat as your only home, it's nice to upgrade and modernize the boat every so often...and we've doing just that.

Having our sailboat on the market puts every dollar we spend on upgrades and updates in focus. It could be a balance of what we wanted to spend just to sell the boat vs sale price and time to sell it…but that calculus changes when we’re living on the boat in a foreign country.

It’s easy….we enjoy the boat and our own updates and upgrades whether the boat sells or not. If the boat doesn’t sell in Panama we’ll be able to offer her for sale in the US for a higher price.

I’m excited to show you what we’re working on:

Knicks, scratches and bruises to the cockpit and house gelcoat and paint….fixed by a professional team and paint matched.

I re-did the varnish downstairs in the high use areas, back to a high gloss shine.

Repainted the Cetol on the back swim step. Cetol adds luster to the wood but also protects it. The swim step is often used and exposed to sun and salt water all the time, so keeping layers of Cetol on it is important preventative maintenance. I treat Cetol much more like paint than varnish and the preparation is MUCH easier and faster than vanish.

Varnish or Cetol? This is the sole (floor) of the main cockpit, a VERY high use area. This means that I need to make sure to get Cetol back on the wood every 2-3 years.

Four years ago, our salon cushions were in desperate need of updating and we knew we needed to brighten up the salon to keep it from becoming a dark cave. So we updated the cushions to a cream white….knowing they might become less white as we went…especially with kids onboard.

Tulum Fact: Did you know we have a third berth downstairs? Yep, we do. When we bought the boat it had two chairs in the main salon but we wanted to take the boat back to a more traditional setup, so we took out the two huge chairs and put in a couch. But we wanted eventual guests, so we made that new couch into a folding bed. It folds out into a double berth for guests to sleep on and it was built by experts, so it’s built strongly. And surprisingly comfortable. But the white cushions did indeed get a bit grungy, so we’ve sent the cushions out to be re-covered….updated and upgraded. No new vinyl, we’ve picked a soft cool material that will wick well in the heat and can be taken off easily to be washed.