Opps, We Did It Again – Key West, Florida, USA, February 19, 2025

Now that we are new boat owners it has been a busy first week on Mariposa 2.0.  The first four days were spent simply cleaning everything and taking inventory of what the prior owners left.  Ron was going through parts, fixing and testing the water maker, and looking over the engine and other electrical systems which were unfortunately wired incorrectly.  For my part I organized our side of the boat unpacking, cleaning the closets, drawers, and laundry.  Then I got to attach the kitchen washing every dish etc.  It’s nice to know I am now the owner of a first-rate garage sale set of dishes including tin silverware.  Yippee.  My mother always says there is no cleaning like moving and she is right.

Of course, there is good with the bad, so we got right to work on a couple key projects.  First off, she needed a bottom job which means we needed to haul out.  Ron got us scheduled to get hauled at Robbie’s Boat Yard in Key West.  This meant that Ron had the awful job of sanding off the first coat of bottom paint. Luckily, there wasn’t much left, so he was able to complete it all in one day.  Excruciating but at least it was done. 

We had a couple of days to kill before our bottom paint arrived, so we decided to go to Miami and attend the boat show.  This proved to be expensive, but we got a great deal on a new dinghy and dinghy engine.  Then we managed to find a life raft (which the boat currently lacks) that we can pick up in Miami in about a week’s time.  The show was a bit disappointing since there were not as many vendors as we had expected but we still managed to spend our money.  We spent the night in Miami and used the following day to provision.  This was worthwhile since it was so much cheaper than Key West grocery shopping and then we also didn’t have to do the 3-hour drive twice in one day.

When we returned, all of our amazon orders had arrived, and we started the bottom job.  Between the two of us painting we got this knocked out in one day too!  She looks so nice now with her new black bottom.  The only bad thing is we found a crack on the back port side hull which had been incorrectly fixed.  This would require the fiberglass to be redone correctly, and we were pleasantly surprised to have a fiberglass guy here at the boat yard who could help us out this week!

Next project on the list was converting the kitchen from propane to induction (electric).  Ron removed the old oven and cooktop, and we had ordered the same ones we had on the first boat to replace them.  When he placed them on Facebook, we were able to resell the old appliances too!  Yeah.  He was able to wire the stove and cooktop pretty quickly and get our new stuff installed.  This means every time I want a cup of coffee, I won’t have to worry about singing the hair off my arms to do so.  This makes me happy.

The last major thing Ron had been juggling is adding a new washer.  It has not been delivered yet so we may install this on the water. Hopefully   We can get it on board before we launch.  Speaking of which our current plan is to launch on Wednesday the 2^7th and head straight to Marathon, Florida to get our rigging fixed.  Things are moving quick, but the boat is really starting to feel like ours.