Leading the Escapadevideo
Giving Our Sailboat Some TLC | Deep Cleaning, Tweaks & Repairs! Ep-203
January 21, 2026 · 21 min · 20K views · Florida
What this video covers
Janae and Jason sail Escapade south from St. Augustine, Florida, to Hammock Beach Marina on the Intracoastal Waterway — a roughly four-hour passage slowed to 3.5 knots at 2,500 RPM by heavy hull growth and adverse current.▶ 2:30 At the marina, they work through a backlog of maintenance jobs.▶ 8:11 The bimini, spray hood, and cockpit cushions get a first deep clean since the canvas was made: diluted bleach applied with a soft brush, rinsed thoroughly, then re-waterproofed with a gallon of fabric waterproofing rolled on with a paint roller rather than sprayed.▶ 9:38 A neighbor, Kat, re-stitches disintegrating zip seams on the bimini and spray hood; the root cause turns out to be non-marine thread sold as UV-rated at an upholstery shop in Malta.▶ 13:51 Jason reinforces the solar arch with two full-length runs of 1.5-inch 316 stainless steel bar — replacing undersized aluminium L-brackets that nearly dropped a panel in the Abacos — at a cost of $200 for off-cut material.▶ 15:44 The autopilot compass is recalibrated by completing two slow circles in C-trial mode, correcting a chartplotter display that had been showing the vessel's heading reversed for roughly a year.▶ 4:41 Non-marine thread sold as UV-rated will fail quickly in tropical sun, and re-stitching every seam before it propagates is the only reliable fix.
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