What’s Broken On Sava

You may be under the illusion that everything works fine onboard Sava. Not true. While our autopilot is still going strong, a lot of other boat parts don’t work. Below, a comprehensive accounting of what’s broken on Sava, and some things that broke and got fixed.

Also, I am not a handy person so my explanations are very basic because that’s my level of understanding. Thankfully Brian is at a much higher level than me. If he wasn’t so handy, we wouldn’t have made it out of Florida. Brian also recommends a good resource for these jobs, the Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual.

Freezer

We thought we got this fixed after the engine debacle, but this freezer is finicky. A couple of times we noticed it was off and we are now very vigilant about ensuring the freezer is plugged in. We also keep the vents clean – got to get rid of the cat hair.

Yet still the temperature regularly creeps above freezing. This is understandable when we haven’t been under power or it’s cloudy, but we don’t know why the freezer doesn’t work when the solar charge is full and we run the engine.

This freezer is driving me crazy. I obsessively check the temperature, which is not easy to do. Because the freezer is strapped into our salon sofa, we have to peek under the table to see the power and temperature indicators.

freezer
A view under the salon table of our freezer indicators
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Made it to Key Largo!

We have already learned the main lesson of sailboat life: don’t plan too much because plans will change. After 2+ weeks! on the hard, we finally got out of Ft. Lauderdale this weekend. Nothing against Ft. Lauderdale, but we were ready to get back on the water, which we did and we made it to Key Largo.

The Opposite of Smooth Sailing

When you get what you want, it may not go your way. We learned that on Saturday when we were a couple of hours in our drive to Miami and the engine conked out.

Backing up: we didn’t sail from Ft. Lauderdale because the swells were very big and the wind was right in our faces. So we motored. And even that didn’t work out so well. But we’re learning, always learning through our mistakes

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Inside Sava

Time to show you what our new home looks like!

Sava is a 46′ Bavaria monohull from 2000. It is a big boat for the two of us (and Domino), because we want guests!

The salon

After two weeks living on Sava, I’m bringing out the boating terms. I need the practice!  The salon is the dining area. It’s pretty big and includes a large wooden table surrounded by cushioned benches on four sides. The seats are almost like couches and it’s actually pretty comfortable. In a lot of boats, the table is collapsible for more space but Sava’s is not. It does have space in the middle of the table for bottles which we are using. Of course.

Inside sava table
Sava’s salon table has a not-so-secret compartment
inside sava storage
Bottle storage in Sava’s salon table
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