In Oxnard, Channel Islands Marina

I pulled into Oxnard on October the 14th, checked into the marina office and almost immediately started to work on boat projects.  The folks at the marina are as friendly as they were the last time I was here in 2011.  Since I'm staying for more than a week or so they are charging me a pro-rated monthly rate which works out to $138/week, which is pretty fantastic for a marina in California with all the amenities.

I've been here for two weeks now and expect that I'll be here for possibly two more.  I've had a flurry of mail delivered from Seattle that I had pending, along with some boat parts that I ordered to fix things that had broken on the way down here.

Its been a busy two weeks.  Today I just finished refinishing my cabin sole (my floor to you land lubbers) and finally I can cross this project off my list.  I started this project two days after arriving here, so its taken almost two weeks to finish.  Living aboard has been...interesting.  After stripping the floor of the old finish I pulled all the hatches from the floor, stowed the saloon table and started applying the finish.  Once that started that there were many days where I couldn't walk on the sole - so I was left with treating my boat as a small set of monkey bars and getting from the companionway to the forward bunk by walking along edge pieces of teak trim at cushion height while grabbing the handholds available.  Its nice to be able to walk around normally again.

I've also fixed the problem I had with one of the clevis pins shearing on my strong track attachment; inspected a strange noise in my new furler (which turned out to be normal, I'm getting used to the new normal noises in my new equipment); cleaned up; started waxing; along with other small projects.

Today I took my Monitor wind vane off and now have it down below in preparation for ripping it apart to replace all the bearings.  One of the nights on the passage down the coast I was doing an inspection of the desk and my equipment and discovered a weird piece of plastic coming out of the back of the pivot tube on the Monitor.  It turns out that a plastic flange had broken which meant that there was more play and friction on the monitor from there on.  After speaking to Scanmar, they suggested that if I had to take the Monitor apart enough to get to that flange, I might as well replace all of the bearings while I was there.  So I have a complete set of replacement bearings along with the instructions and tomorrow I'll be starting the process of tearing it apart...hoping that I can get it all back together again!  I've put 9000 miles on the Monitor, so its ahead of schedule for the bearing replacement (scheduled at 15,000 miles.)  I guess the plus side of this project is that I get to learn how the monitor is serviced...yay.

On my remaining list I have things like: varnishing all my exterior teak; teak oiling my interior teak; waxing the topsides; waxing the hull; change the engine oil; fix a rivet which has come out of my stove leaving the top grill loose; along with various other projects.

I'm looking forward to getting out of here and continuing my trip into Mexico.  The last time I was down this way I didn't leave San Diego until December 4th.  I think I'll be ahead of that schedule this time, but perhaps not by as much as I first expected.

All is well here.  Even though I'm working on boat projects, live in Oxnard is pretty easy.