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Refit Diaries: 10/19/2025 – 10/26/2025

Wow, time is flying by! Where did the week go? Besides keeping ourselves bathed, clothed and fed, we have not done anything outside of boat work this week. It’s been a blur of physically working in the yard, and mentally working from the house researching/sourcing materials/keeping track of parts, tools and payments. So, let’s get right into it… This week’s projects included:

Rebuilding starboard aft cabin bed.

We picked up some marine-grade plywood on Monday and cut the front and sides for our new starboard aft cabin bed base. Reminder: the plan is to expand the base to make room for new batteries and electrical components. Easier said than done, though— the measuring process was a real pain, since nothing on the boat is perfectly square. Luckily, after a million re-measures, a couple trips back to the hardware store and one “learning experience,” Ray nailed it on the second try (let’s just pretend the first attempt never happened).

We’ll have to hit pause on this project until our new air conditioner, batteries, and inverter arrive, but it feels good to see real progress. Slowly but surely, this cabin is coming together, and we’re feeling optimistic about where it’s headed.

Stainless work.

We had the machinists at Port Whangarei Marine Center repair and reinforce the handle on the steps leading from the helm to the coach roof. They fixed the cracked welds and added an extra stainless steel bar across the middle for added strength and longevity. Since we use this handle every day to reach the helm and depend on it in rough weather, this was an critical project to keep our boat safe.

We also had them fabricate eight long brackets to frame our escape hatches, since we weren’t satisfied with the two small aluminum tabs installed during a recall to keep the glass from falling out. We dive (passionately, maybe a little angrily) into just how risky that setup is in our latest video, so be sure to watch ’til the end!

Preparing to un-step the mast. 

With the help of a rigger, we took down the sails and boom to get ready for Sabado’s mast removal next week. Ray wrapped up disconnecting all the wiring from the mast and also unhooked the generator, since we’ll be lifting that out with the crane too. 

We’re trying to keep our crane time (and costs!) to a minimum, so all this prep work should make the big day go a lot faster. 

Ordering new mainsail.

Once we took down the mainsail, we sent it off with a representative from North Sails to get measurements and see what parts could be repurposed for our new one. Somewhere between Tonga and New Zealand, we finally admitted it was time for a replacement. We’ve only had this sail for three years, but after nearly 30,000 nautical miles, it’s stretched so much that we can’t get a proper trim anymore. The jib, on the other hand, is still in great shape because we tend to fly larger headsails most of the time. For the new mainsail, we’ve decided to move away from the square-top design and go with a large roach instead. 

We also gave them our gennaker that a sailmaker in Tahiti said was “burnt to a crisp”. We’re not sure if it’s something that can be repaired or repurposed, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have the manufacturers of the sail re-evaluate it. 

Approved carpentry quote for workshop buildout.

We’ve officially locked in a carpenter for the workshop buildout, which is a huge relief after recent uncertainty! We met with the company on Friday to discuss the details. To keep the project within budget, we’ll be handling the demolition ourselves. We also received a flipbook of finish samples and will be sharing our favorite options soon. Be sure to follow us on Instagram (@sv_sabado) for real-time design updates!

Getting organized. 

We have yet to visit a yard without accounting issues. There always seems to be problems when there’s guys in the yard doing the work, reporting their work to a manager, who reports it to an accountant, who has a secretary distribute invoices. We picked up a binder this week to organize our printed and notated invoices and quotes, since the stack on our desk at the house was getting unruly. We write the date/method (wire, credit card, check) of all payments on the corresponding invoice, and date/method (email, WhatsApp, in person meeting) of all quote approvals, and file them away accordingly. I carry the binder with us to the yard and back to the house so I always have it handy if an email comes in about a “missing payment”. There’s a lot of room for error when multiple vendors and contractors are involved all at once. It’s a tedious process but going through everything with a fine tooth comb has always been worth it for us. Case in point: this week we caught a new invoice that included a line item we’d already paid!

Cockpit refrigerator. 

Our new cockpit refrigerator has arrived! We picked it up and unboxed it in the garage. Despite being the exact same model number, it has slightly different dimensions. We drove to the boat to evaluate the gaping hole it will eventually reside in. Unfortunately, we’ll have to make some modifications to accommodate the new dimensions. It’s doable, we’re just a smidge annoyed. 

Source new solar panels.

The electrician we had been working with was unable to follow through on the solar panels we’d agreed upon. Her alternative option was too large for our solar arch and offered less power output. As a result, we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands by researching and ordering panels ourselves that better meet our needs. 

Begin port forward demolition. 

Instead of taking the day off from boat work yesterday as planned, we ended up driving to the yard and diving into the port forward cabin, our soon-to-be workshop. Lagoon builds their boats by assembling all the furniture first and then dropping it into the hull, hiding countless screws and making dismantling anything a real challenge. We tore out what we could and cut away the rest. There’s still plenty left to do, but it felt great to finally get started in there.

Set up new sewing machine.

The transformer for my sewing machine arrived, so I unboxed and set it up last night. As someone who knows nothing about sewing machines, it would have been nice if the parts were labeled! Ray helped me sort through the unmarked plastic bags of mystery pieces while we followed along with the tutorial video. I wound my first bobbin before calling it a night and finishing up this post. I’m looking forward to playing around with it more next week.

That’s the update, folks! Thanks for following along, we hope you had a great week. 🙂