Major care tasks that may interest other owners
When we hauled out in August 2024, we didn’t realize Rainshadow would be on the hard until mid June 2026. A variety of events lead us to not sail at all in 2025. We did work on Rainshadow in 2025, but the brutal work started in April 2026.
Rainshadow has undergone a refit while moored in our current Hawaii homeport. But Hilo is where wind goes to die so it’s past time for Rainshadow to have a new homeport, which means another passage.
Our boat has 10 portlights, 5 on each side of the cabin. We learned on our recent passage to Hawaii that they are leaking. There are multiple reasons why.
Rainshadow safely took us on our first passage from the Seattle area to Hilo Hawaii, but not without some failures. Here’s the list of things that broke while we were underway. [Editor’s note Dec 2022: I have updated this original posting with how we addressed each failure.]
For months as we considered our upcoming passage from Seattle to Hilo, we worked on a list of things that HAD to be done before we set off. The list varied in size throughout the spring, but once we reached the boat, pragmatism and schedule reduced the list to a more manageable size.
Here is the short list of what we actually completed before setting off in late June. I’ve also added some notes about the usefulness of the repair/update during the passage.
In the spring of 2015, we left our land-based home in Hawaii and returned to the Pacific Northwest.
We headed from our winter home to the boat in May, and spent some time doing repairs, both at the marina and while underway on our 1st summer journey to Barkley Sound. Here’s the list of repairs/improvements:
Rainshadow spent a month on the hard at Sea Marine in Port Townsend starting in late September so we could complete the following maintenance tasks:
One persistent theme on the Nicholson 38 community forum is the rudder.
Even though we left Rainshadow by herself while we spent the winter in Hawaii, we still made quite a few improvements at the end of the 2012 cruising season and the start of 2013 season.…