First, thank you everyone for all of your concerns! Second . . . WE DID IT! After 2 of the most confusing, emotional, and stressful months of our lives, we finally made it back to the water. We left off on our channel with Amanda preparing to graduate her Physician Assistant program and studying for her final Board Exam. We are so proud to say that Amanda graduated in the top 10% of her class, passed her board exam with flying colors, and that we were able to escape to celebrate for a couple days. Our plan was to go on vacation for a few days, celebrate the end of Amanda's 8 year school career, and then come back to wrap up the 3 months or so of work needed to launch the boat. In the middle of the trip, we got a call from the boatyard and our plans instantly changed. We had already been through a lot at Cracker Boy Boat Works, including termites, bad shipstore products, and harassment, but nothing that we couldn't shrug off. This time though, the yard threatened to double our rent from $3k/month to $6k/month because we weren't 'making enough progress'. This is the short version, we aren't into bashing people online, but IT SUCKED! After getting the news, we had something like 20 days to get our boat in the water . . . which compressed our timeline by almost 4x. Needless to say, we ran around like crazy, spent a lot of money, and really struggled to do good work. We ended up fighting with the yard and taking an extra 3 weeks after almost sinking in their slip due to a failed grounding plate seal. When it was all said and done, we had painted the boat, started a hydraulic steering system, fiberglassed custom rudders, machined custom stainless rudder brackets and hardware, built a custom masthead, rigged our mast with Dyneema, serviced our Dinghy/engine, tore down our main engine (still in progress), built our 16kWh lithium battery bank, built a custom 1500w charger, fabricated and mounted a crossbeam, made some custom moorings, and were still able to record a few of those moments! It was a crazy amount of work, and we still have a way to go, but we are alive and wet :) Thank you to everyone who has supported us and checked on us. We are excited to announce that we are still working on this project, and that we will be resuming more regular videos very soon! If you want to help out or get involved, feel free to reach out to us on Facebook or by email: maroonedby5@gmail.com Sand, Sun, and Rum. ~ Amanda and John

Things are starting to pick up here, check it out! Sometimes we thing we should have done a van conversion to save some money (kidding), but it would have definitely been cheaper . . . This week we show off a little about our struggle with sails. I mean, who has 13 different sails!? Even then, we are still 2 sails short of a functioning set, DANG IT! Next up, we buy some Stainless Steel to cut our own chainplates and brackets . . . then realize it will take us too long to cut ourselves. Why stress when we can use that time better? After, we get into some of our work on the Rudders and Windows, along with our struggle to seal some leaks. For the next several episodes, we will cover MANY topics as we pick up speed. If it seems a little hard to keep track of, it is, trust us! If you enjoyed our contenct, remember to like, share, and subscribe :)

Thank you everyone for checking in on us, we're finally back! It has been a crazy ride this far, but we've found some new motivation to keep moving. With a new mindset and a new approach to this project, we decided we needed a whole new season to capture it. For us, it's go time! We are starting to run dangerously low on budget and have decided that we need to get in the water ASAP. Our new plan is to evacuate to one of the islands in the Caribbean to take advantage of cheaper yard rates. In order to get there, we have a LOT to finish to make the trip including Rigging, Steering, Rudders, Anchoring, Power, and Water . . . no small feat. Not only are we racing our budget, but are also racing time now as well. Will we make it? We aren't sure, but we are laying it all on the line to find out! Either way, we've got some awesome content coming your way, stay tuned :)

After tons of work, we finally were able to finish building our bed! Last episode, we cut out a massive section of our deck, along with a bench, in order to create a new space for our bed. Up until this week, we've been sleeping on the table in the main saloon for two months now, which has killed our morale. Moving down in to the hull has opened up the area so much more and we are much happier now that we can sit up and get out of bed. Though this was a big win for us, the whole reason we were working inside was because of the crazy amount of rain we've been getting . . . which sucks! The majority of the work we are trying to finish right now is hull work, which we can't work on when it rains. In fact, it has almost rained for the whole last week with breaks that are just long enough to get dried and setup. This has been a huge damper on our progress, especially because we have a TON of leaks. The only thing worse than not being able to work is being wet while not being able to work. . . . it'll get better, right? We have a few ideas, but more on that next time! Like our content? Find more on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SailingBlackPearl/ Want to see more? Keep us going with a coffee: Venmo: @SailingBlackPearl Want to join the crew? Become a patron: https://patreon.com/sailingblackpearl Music: JJD - Adventure

So much to catch up on for this refit, but we just had to lockdown and get the video up! We left off a couple weeks ago with sanding and patching our hulls. Fast forward a month and we are laying glass and preparing to paint, crossing our fingers. The Pearl had 17 massive holes that needed to be patched before any glass could be laid. John finished putting the last piece in as Amanda finished sanding, so we jumped into fiberglassing and learned on the spot. Since starting that process, we've laid nearly 200 yards of glass on our hull to reinforce and waterproof her. After a few days of rain, we also decided to do some interior work. Having the bed in the main cabin is a real hassle and significantly cuts down our living space. This lead us to start working on our new bedroom, and we can never just take the easy road, and resulted in a massive new hole in our deck. Our 3'7" hulls were just not wide enough to fit our full-queen sized bed, so we cut out a few pieces of the hull to make a suitable space. While we were in the mood for demolition, we took the opportunity to address the kitchen cabinets, the disgusting chest freezer, some stairs, and the built in cooler outside . . . it all had to go! We have some big plans coming up, so it is out with the old and in with the new. A few other activities include some experimenting with fairing, some planning for our rigging, investigating a new crossbeam, and trying out our automotive paint of course. It has been a hectic couple weeks, but we look forward to showing some really cool content as we get into the fun stuff! Sand, Sun, and Rum. ~ Amanda and John We've updated our Patreon page, so be sure to check us out! https://www.patreon.com/SailingBlackPearl Follow us on Facebook for live streams and fun updates! https://www.facebook.com/SailingBlackPearl

We've been promising this video for a long time, and here it is . . . the story of us! Everyone has a unique story, but we like to think we are special :) Learn a little about us, our backgrounds, and where we come from. Sometimes we don't even understand how we got here, but knowing a little of the backstory definitely helps! As self proclaimed 'Adventure-Extraordinaires', the crew of Sailing Black Pearl has some serious credentials in living off the beaten path. Amanda and John's newest adventure, however, is quite the undertaking. Follow along on this young couple's crazy journey as they refit an old wooden catamaran from 1962 in a flurry of firsts. Having little repair experience, zero sail experience, and no assets to liquidate, this story is bound to have many twists and turns. What possessed these lunatics to buy a sinking boat?! Tune in to find out! Sand, sun, and rum. - Amanda and John

After missing a week of film, and a flurry of confusion around termites, WE ARE BACK ON TRACK! No, our boat is not destroyed, but we did cut some big holes in her to replace damaged areas. To date, we have patched 16/17 holes (just cut out our last one !!), have sanded more than 75% of the paint off, named our boat, and planned out the remaining work to accomplish while on the hard! While most of the work we've been doing has been covered, we try to focus on some of the other areas of interest this week. After months of contemplating names, we finally chose to rename Mahi Mahi to Black Pearl and to rename our channel "Sailing Black Pearl". Part of the time we would have spend editing video went towards designing a new logo for our channel. There are few comments about the logo, but the backstories and symbolism will be explained next week on our "Meet the Crew" episode! Other topics include the follow up on the Flour / Epoxy Peanut Butter mix, talk about our paint plans, and a progress shot of the boat. Patrons!! Our page address has now changed to: https://www.patreon.com/SailingBlackPearl

Know what other force of nature can destroy a boat? Termites! Hurricane damaged boats can be a walk in the park compared to repairing a boat damaged by termites, even if it isn't a wood boat. Backstory: Before we took on this refit, we got a practice run on a 36’ 1974 Trojan. It was a very well built fiberglass boat, but was in need of a fair amount of work due to a termite infestation. We got the boat outside of termite season, but boy were we in for a nasty surprise when we rolled into March and the colony woke up. There are many different termites, but the ones we came across look like ants with wings and swarm thousands at a time. After having replaced a majority of the wood in the boat, I had only left a few pieces. From those last few pieces, thousands of termites flew out overnight, and continued to do so for weeks. We fought them with bug bombs, borax, and discovered that fumigation is the only solution at that point. When it was all said and done, the termites had totally destroyed the interior of the boat, all in under a year. Every wall, shelf, and panel was chewed threw and needed to be replaced. Now: Our experiences lead us to take termites very seriously. Some species of termites can ingest as much as a pound of wood as a colony in a single day . . . no bueno! So you can imagine how horrified we were to discover a massive swarm of termites on our FULLY WOOD boat. The difference this time, all the termites we found had already dropped their wings, bad sign! We’ve had this boat for more than a year now, and not a single sign of termite activity (keep in mind we can see every inch of wood on our boat since it is gutted to ribs and stringers). In the same amount of time, our last boat fostered two different swarms, what we would call two seasons. They also start with their wings and leave the colony, then drop them upon arriving at a new site. Once establishing a colony, you will rarely see any sign of activity, as they stay in the wood. So what does all of this mean? They came from somewhere else, and chose us to be their next host! After a couple days of looking around the yard, and setting off $70 of bug bombs (enough to treat 60,000sqft) in an attempt to kill the intruders before they dig in, we found several massive colonies in the boatyard. The following evenings were accompanied by massive swarms of flying termites all over the yard as well. We contacted the yard to let them know about the issue, but were not met with a great response. After speaking with a neighbor who had also noticed the activity on property, we found out that the yard had told them that we brought the termites . . . nice. What is next? The yard has agreed to bring an exterminator to the property to walk around with us, so we will see what happens. This does put a huge damper on our project though, and definitely jeopardizes it’s future . . . We will see what next week brings! Also . . . Flour as a thickener? YES! This is something we have seen a couple times, but haven’t tried yet ourselves. In the past, we have been using the fine dust from sanding as an epoxy thickener, but the consistency isn’t always the same and it can be difficult to work with. So this week, we tried it . . . and love it! Flour seems to bring some of the best qualities of saw dust and silica, while being easy to work with and economical. We created a test piece with this mixture and let it soak in water for a few days, tune in next week for the results! Like our content? Join our Patron Community! https://patreon.com/Maroonedby5

In this week’s episode, we capture a few intimate moments about living in a boatyard, sanding successes, botched repairs, and possibly a YouTube first with an onboard mini-split ac unit. The Successes: - Amanda was able to sand the entire inside of one hull this last week, having a total of about 10 man-hours! - We were able to remove the tarp from the cabin. - The AC unit kept up on a near 90 degree day! - Fixed the shower with a headband. The Fails: - John miscalculated the panel repair from our last episode and had to cut part of it to try again. - One of the windows wasn’t completely sealed and leaked on the bed during a storm, and almost happened a second time before we sealed it. - John bought the wrong size angle grinder pads . . . again! More on the AC: So we decided to put a mini-split ac unit on our boat for several reasons, a few including: - Extreme efficiency, our unit (22 Seer Pioneer 12000BTU 110v mini-split) draws about 360W on it’s max cooling setting . . . NICE! Other portable AC units can use as much as 1200W, which would force us to run a generator daily to bridge the difference in our solar production. - Portability, which is really important when you do not know what the final layout of your space will be. In our case, we may chose to move the AC to a completely different part of the boat before we finish, which would not work for a marine AC system. - DIY Friendly and takes less than a day to put together, pretty self-explanatory. - Noise, there is none! The indoor and outdoor units are almost completely silent, the ‘quiet’ refrigerator makes more noise. - Dehumidifies, like a lot! Having an old wood boat, humidity is a super big ‘no no’. This unit has done an incredible job keeping things dry, even with massive holes in the side of our boat. So far, we are extremely happy with how this unit performs. Though it looks unsightly now, we will likely be building it into the outdoor section, making the outdoor unit nearly invisible. The lines running across the wall on the inside will be concealed by cabinets in the future, leaving only the stylish head unit. As for the power, we are pretty confident that this 12000BTU unit will cool our 11x11 cabin without struggle, even with all windows open on a 90+ degree days. During the nights, we believe that the unit will be able to cool inside the hulls reasonably well with assisted circulation. All that said, there is just no tradeoff on the power consumption. The unit pulls as little as 50W when a stable temperature has been reached, and no more than around 950W on ‘turbo’ mode. The unit can cool our entire cabin 15-20 degrees in 10-15 minutes, which is awesome! The fact that we still have massive holes in the side of our boat, and even leaving the cabin door open, this unit still keeps up and does it’s job. We have no idea how this unit will hold up in a maritime environment, but even planning for a short lifetime, it is a well worth investment for us and we look forward to sharing updates on it’s performance at sea! Check out the unit here: https://www.amazon.com/PIONEER-Air-Conditioner-Pioneer-Heatpump/dp/B01DVW6CAU?th=1 Like our content? Join our Patron community! https://patreon.com/Maroonedby5

A little late, but we got it posted! Not as much progress as we would have liked to make this week, so we covered a few other things. John discusses the process he uses to patch the plywood hulls, such as the grinding strategies and how to match a curve in the hull. He also shows the biggest patch we’ve done yet, and we so hope it works! This week we also got a tip from the neighbor about a sander from FESTOOL. He had an extra one that he let us borrow and try out, and it is working so well that we went ahead and ordered our own . . . more to follow on that, but we just might be done with stripping chemicals altogether! Because we are trying to move onto the boat as soon as possible, we needed to figure out how to do internet effectively while living aboard. In this episode, John covers how we put ulimited 4g internet on our catamaran, and shows it in action! Internet Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csvwRV0zdJ4&t=15m43s  Apparently it is pretty difficult to replace your home internet with 4G data, so we will cover a few ways to extend your plan as well. We pay $80/mo currently with Impact Wireless and get a plan with true unlimited data (and hotspot data, which isn’t required). This measns no speed throttling after x Gb, we’ve used more than 100Gb this month and are still consistently getting over 5Mb/s throughout the day . . . and that is with deprioritized data (after 50Gb for us)! What do we use for our equipment? Modem: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-LTE-Modem-Broadband-Connection/dp/B01MQRHQW4/ref=asc_df_B01MQRHQW4/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309751315916&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5839779701412662434&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1015116&hvtargid=pla-524457502976&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=67183599252&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=309751315916&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5839779701412662434&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1015116&hvtargid=pla-524457502976 Router: Any DD-WRT compatible Router (to bypass hotspot data), or just a plain router. https://dd-wrt.com/ SIM Card: https://www.infiniteltedata.com/ Who is owned by: https://impact-wireless.com/ --------- More -------- More about us? We will publish a ‘prequel’ with all the details you want to know, coming soon! Like our content? Become a patron! https://patreon.com/Maroonedby5

Have you recently run aground? Do you have holes in your boat? This video might be for you! In this episode, we show off our wood patching and paint removal skills in greater detail. Same as last time, please excuse or rough editing and videos during session 1 😁 If you are new, check out our other videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg2UHSaE8S24ExYjjZaOS4b0PjzIbc-11 Best names for our hole? - Cash Flow - Money Pit - Seathrough - Keel-holed - Swim-Up Bar Quick Notes: Paint Removal - We mentioned 3-4 hours to sand about 30 sqft, just a note that is 3-4 hours of sanding time after treating and scraping 2 layers of Jasco. Also, Amanda is not using and paint remover on the white areas of the hull as she is still maintaining about a 10sqft/hr pace. Wood Patches - plywood is supposed to have a 12:1 taper while fiberglass is closer to 8:1. This taper prevents the patch from being pushed in under great pressure. patches do not need to fit perfectly, but you want to try to match them as best as possible to get the most adhesion. while using bare wood, be sure to treat exposed wood with resin prior to placement to maximize adhesion. A big thank you to the sailing community this far, we have had enormous amounts of support and cannot be grateful enough! We have some great stories to share next week about how incredible these people are! Like our content? Keep the camera rolling with a little coffee! www.patreon.com/Maroonedby5 Music: Spring In My Step - Silent Partner

WELCOME TO SEASON 1! Even though this is not the beginning of our struggle, we invite you to one of the most in-depth refits happening on YouTube. Having only done a handful of work prior on this boat project, this is an awesome opportunity to see the full build process on our 1962 CSK Catamaran. This episode covers a little about the beginnings of our most recent project, refitting a sailing catamaran as a liveaboard for under $50k. We recently pulled it out of the water to prevent it from sinking and have a lot of work to do. Other topics covered include our quest to find the best method to removing 50 year old bottom paint, like sanding, sandblasting, paint strippers, and more! We also talk a little about hull repair, woodwork, rib repair and more. Sanding strategies tried in this episode: - Citrus Strip, worked, but was not cost effective. - Aqua Strip, didn't work too well, comparable to Citrus Strip but more expensive. - Jasco Paint Remover (spray), worked the best of all products for us. - Jasco Paint Remover (gel), was least effective . . . fancy that. - Angle Grinder, a possible solution, but damages the fiberglass too much. - Sanding only, sucks. It can be done, but takes too many man hours. Woodworking strategies in this episode: - Gorilla Glue Wood Glue, works very well. Not waterproof or submersible, but held under pressure for about 48 hours submersed before failing. - Bondo Epoxy Filler, works very well in the joints to seal and protect the repairs. For those that missed the Season 1 Preview, you can find it here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXnaM_UnX44 For those that have asked, YES, we will be releasing a 'Prequel'! Catch that here when available:[not available] Like our content? Want to see more? Check out our page on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Maroonedby5 Want more frequent updates or stories? Visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Maroonedby5/ Like the music? Find it here: http://ncs.io/adventure

Check out our Facebook page for more frequent updates: @SailingBlackPearl After nearly a year of teasing, we finally decided to make good on our promises of outfitting a fully functioning liveaboard catamaran for UNDER $50k . . . or give it our best shot! After an aggressive couple weeks, everything has been put into motion. We are doing our best to stay true to the challenge, so film time may be brief. That being said, climb aboard for our first look at this cheap catamaran! Meet Mahi Mahi: This vessel is a 1962 42' (48' LOA) CSK Catamaram built by Rudy Choy himself. There is some pretty awesome history to go along with it, but we will cover that in a separate video. Mahi Mahi has had a rough life, so there is plenty of work to be done. Between her age, and the poor repairs made by the last owner, we have taken on the challenge of repairing several soft areas in Mahogany Wood Hull, separated and broken ribs, and many other urgent issues. Over the last year, we have had 5 or 6 close calls with holes opening up along previously repaired areas. Some leaks filled our hulls to chest height with water, but Mahi managed pulled through each time. Our goal for this project is to build her up from the ribs and stringers into a fully functioning liveaboard vessel, with a total price of $50k. It is ambitious, but we have some awesome tips and tricks to pass on. Will we make it? Tune in to find out! Want better videos with more details!? Join us on Patreon! www.Patreon.com/SailingBlackPearl