Frolicking with Frolic

This piece was written in September and updated a bit in early 2017 and only just now published.

Mary and I finally came to a decision on renaming our Mainship 30 Pilot II from Stray Dog (a reference to Citadel alumni) to Frolic.  So now we don't go boating; we go for a Frolic.
Frolic came home to roost in its lift in July after that 20,000-lb capacity item was completed.  It is a Deco lift and seems well designed and was installed by Ansley construction.  No more regular bottom jobs, yippee!  No more barnacles growing on hull and running gear.  No more wooden hull to constantly paint and varnish!

With the boat in the lift and equipped with fresh water wash fittings on both main engine and generator, I have been assiduous in keeping them well rinsed after every outing.

Even though our longer ranger cruising days are probably behind us, we like to run to nearby places like Apalachicola - Saint Marks area, Port Saint Joe and even 123 miles west to Orange Beach where we moored behind brother Jim's house alongside his Grand Banks 42.  It was nice to run at 19 knots and get to Jim's in around 8 hours total time.

When I went to Pirates Cove Marina in Panama City Beach to bring the boat home, I experienced batteries too weak to start the engine, despite have run the boat a couple of times during the month-long wait for the lift to be constructed. 

I got the marina to jump start the boat and ran it the fourteen miles to its new home where it sat for three months while I made a bunch of reliability changes including replacement of the ZF electronic shifter with a more reliable Morse shifter and rewiring the DC system to accommodate a new set of house batteries.

Now the boat is ready.