First Hurdles in making our decision to go to Alaska.

We've been talking about taking our boat, Second Chance, to Alaska for the last several years and finally decided that this is the year!

First we had to overcome several hurdles before making this decision. 

The big one - do we put a new motor in the boat before we go to Alaska?  And we definitely need new fuel tanks before the trip.  In order to get to the fuel tanks we have to take the motor out of the boat.  So... it then makes sense (in a crazy expensive way) to change out the motor at the same time!

So last winter we did both.  A new rebuilt Volvo Penta diesel motor with no hours on it AND had new fuel tanks fabricated by Jensen Marine of Victoria Canada.

 


Old motor coming out of the boat through the pilot house roof



Away with the old motor!

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Here is one of the old fuel tanks - notice the small hole in the bottom!  Thank goodness we never sprang a leak!!

 

 

Once the old motor and fuel tanks came out of the boat, then the new ones had to go into the boat!

 



 Isn't she a beauty!

Not so pretty to look at but certainly an improvement!

 

 

 

Whew!  Now that that decision has been made and the new motor and tanks are in, we're on to the next hurdle:

 

Second Chance as most of you know, is an old fishing trawler that we have been working on the conversion from a commercial fish boat to a pleasure boat for the last 6 years.

 

One of the remaining structural items has been to replace the ribs on the stern starboard side where the fishermen would shovel the ice into the fish hold.  The fishermen would shovel the ice right against the side of the boat and over time they shoveled the ribs right out of the boat!

 

When we hauled out to paint the bottom of the boat this fall we found that the bottom planks no longer had any ribs left to attach to!  So we had to deal with this issue immediately!!

 

The cap rail had to come off and the ribs were pounded in from the top down.

 

It was interesting to watch the shipwrights heat the ribs and bend them around the hull!

 

It's truly artwork!

 

 

 

As you can see this became a MAJOR job!!

 

But FINALLY we were back in the water thanks to Aaron Day @ Day Boat Company!



 

 

 

 

 

And the last major hurtle to tackle before being able to make our trip:

 

Communication!

 

Since Evergreen Wealth Management will still be open while we are traveling, we need to be able to communicate with our clients, receive data, emails, and cell service.  So after lots of research we have decided to rent satellite equipment and communicate this way.  We have tested the service out and it will do the job nicely!  We will also be using our Sprint WiFi Hot Spot which we have used in Canada in the past and works really well.

 

Having overcome these hurdles we have finally made the decision to travel to Alaska!