Pink stuff

After a great summer, during which Frances used the boat as her floating summer cottage when we weren't cruising, it's time to winterize.

Last weekend, we had a freak October snowstorm that dropped 8-10 inches of snow on Connecticut's trees that still had all or most of their leaves. The result was widespread power outages, some of which have now exceeded a week.  Our street was almost impassible.

We got our power back in three days and one nice afternoon this week, we went to the boat and started that always sloppy process of winterizing the engines.

We have fresh water (actually antifreeze) cooled engines so we only have to run non-toxic antifreeze through the heat exchangers and the exhaust risers to protect us from freezing during the long winter to come. Funny to see snow on the boat on such a beautiful day in October.

Our boat came out of the water on Friday to make room for others who were coming up the Connecticut River for winter storage. Today (Saturday), we winterized the fresh water system, the air conditioner and the head and holding tank with another 10 gallons of pink stuff. Can't be happy until we see every faucet running pink.

Frances continued to put things away and get the interior ready for winter.  One of her better discoveries was a way to vacuum bag much of our bedding.  Put the bedding in a special plastic bag and then suck the air out using our vacuum cleaner. Worked like a charm. No air, no mold problems.

We have lots of things to do on the boat this winter, although we won't be spending every weekend doing them. But while we're not there, we left our little bear, who goes everywhere with us on the boat, standing guard.