Wrapping Up! – Kindred Spirit

When you love boating, the season begins with excitement and the anticipation of being on the water, in the sunshine, and enjoying the sea air. When you love boating, the season ends with a certain sadness and a lot of work. The work is almost the reverse of five months earlier, but a bit harder and less enjoyable. Such is life for a boater in New England when the season is only five months long.

We paced ourselves this year by doing some tasks while we were still enjoying those last small trips. That approach did make it more pleasurable.

It is hard to take photos and still participate in the projects, and this year I took a much more active role in preparing for the haul out. As I should!

How do you find new ways to write about and photograph something that is repeated every year? 🤔😬🥴

Scrubbing the phifertex sunshades out on the front deck.

Al snapping the clean sunshades back onto the pilot house windows to dry. They were rolled up and stored away after that.

The dinghy engine needs to be winterized. On our previous boats we would bring the whole dinghy home and store it by hanging from the ceiling of our garage. The engine would be winterized in a trash can filled with fresh water. Since this dinghy lives on the Kadey Krogen’s flybridge instead of hanging on davits, it can spend the winter on the flybridge under the shrinkwrap.

Al i s pumping clean airplane fuel into the engine before starting it. I am starting the engine and keeping it at idle.

Starting upper right, going clockwise – These “ear muffs” supply fresh water for flushing to the engine. The stream of water shows that all is well and the engine is working. I am getting ready to spray “fogging fluid” into the carburetor. Al stops the engine at just the right time. The fog/smoke can be seen behind the engine.

The flybridge needs to be prepared for the winter as well. First step was to remove the bimini and lower the stainless steel supports for that (no photos – all hands were too busy.) Next step after wintering the dinghy engine was to remove the boom and lower the mast.

Al is removing the boom so that the mast can be lowered.

The dinghy is covered, the boom lies beside it and the mast is down and resting on a support. All ready to hibernate through the winter under the shrink wrap.

This was the first season we left our mooring just sit without ever preparing it for use. On our way back from our overnight in West Harbor, we stopped there so that Al could check it and clean it a bit. Added a new float.

Eeeuw….. lots of growth on that line. There were even tiny mussels among the seaweed.

We spent the night aboard, our last night for 2021, and left the slip in the morning to head for the lift well.

Al is removing the lines from the outer pole at our slip for the winter as I keep the boat in place.

Hauling the boat out of the water is a big event. Year after year, I take a breath and hope those straps will hold and the poppits are in place just so. And year after year, everything goes smoothly with no problems. SYC’s crew is very good at what they do.

Chris and crew are adjusting the slings before lifting *Kindred Spirit* out of the water. We are the only boat in the yard with stabilizer fins so no one wants to catch the sling on them.

A forceful spray cleans the boat’s bottom of summer scum.

After that thorough bottom wash, *Kindred Spirit* is moved over to her winter home. It is amazing how they maneuver these boats into their places.

The poppits (metal stands that support the boat) are carefully placed under the hull at specific locations to keep her upright. I try not to think about this too much when I am working inside or outside the boat when she is on the “hard.”

Poppits in place and she is fully blocked for the winter.

A few days later, *Kindred Spirit* is fully shrink-wrapped.

MY biggest task is unloading all of the things that don’t stay on the boat over the winter and putting it all away at our house. “Putting away” means consolidating all the duplicates we now have for spices, pantry items, and toiletries. Then the laundering of the bed linens and towels and the careful packing away of the pillows. It takes a few days and I did not take pictures! Too boring.

Here’s a funny little thing that has a certain serendipity to it. We were recently given a KK39 brochure. Fifty-two Kadey Krogen 39s were made from 1998 until 2008. Kindred Spirit is a 2004. We were perusing the brochure and noticed the following —

*Travelin’ Man*, Hull # 42, is the featured KK39 inside the brochure. Guess what? That KK39 is our very own *Kindred Spirit*! After beginning her life as *Travelin’ Man*, she became *Limerick*, then *The Edge* and then, well, you know the rest of that story.

As we studied the KK39 on the back (and front) of the brochure, *Sweet Time*, we realized that we know this boat, too. Hull #40, began as *Sweet Time*, then *Counting Stars*, and became *Limerick*, belonging to our very dear friends, Don and Cindy. To add to the confusion and coincidence, both of these KK39’s in the brochure were once named *Limerick*, and were owned by Don and Cindy. You can’t make these things up! The four of us think is pretty cool that both of our KK39s are in this old sales brochure.

And so the 2021 boating season has ended. It was a good season, certainly better than 2020! We launched on May 10, 2021 and hauled on October 14, 2021, 158 days (22.5 weeks or 5.25 months.) We spent at least 93 of those days aboard the boat, almost 60% of the season. That does not count Al’s project work days.

One last note, you may notice that the blog has a different look now. It needed a freshening so I took the plunge and changed it to another WordPress theme. Although it was a little intimidating to try this, it all seemed to move over. I’ll have some tweaking of old posts to do over the winter.

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