Refit #5-6. This is Hard

It’s been a tough couple of weeks. A combination of very cold and wet weather, delays with the boat yard, unpleasant cost surprises and the challenge of the sheer scale of the project slightly shook my resolve. (Only slightly, I promise!)

This project is hard; we fight for literally every step forward and even the smallest successes have to be earned. This has led me to want to share, briefly I promise, a little bit about the harder realities of our project. One of the things Alec and I normally don’t like about media such as blogs and social media is the the tendency for them to overplay the positive and beautiful and to downplay the hard and ugly stuff. So, I want to try to bring honest light to the full width of our experience – both the good and the tough stuff.

As exciting and fulfilling as refitting the boat has been, it has also often been in equal measure incredibly difficult and frustrating. I was considering it as I prepared to write this, and I can say with surety that this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We are convinced it will all be worth it, and I could not be more excited for the adventure this refit project is going to make possible for us, but the enormity of the challenge has at times made it a little harder than expected to keep that in focus.

Sometimes the challenge is physical – such as attempting to work in a really cramped space, or having to use brute force with muscles I didn’t even know I had. But more often I’d say it’s mental. Some of the things we’re doing are just difficult problems from the outset, like the new boat wiring system Alec designed. And others test your capacity for patience (such as when it took us more than half an hour to cut out a mount for our engine battery switch because of a problem with the hole saw), perseverance (for example, our radar arch, which will hold our solar panels, has gone through five iterations and three welders and STILL we don’t have a quote that is reasonable), and faith (in yourself and your ability to get things done, and in the people around you to follow through on their promises).

But, we have managed some important wins. Most exciting for me was that we finally managed to get the engine service completed! Two mechanics spent the whole day with us, reviewing every bit of the engine / sail drive transmission and patiently answering the hundreds of questions I peppered them with while they worked. Big win #1 of this was that they discovered we had a leak in the raw water pump. This is something that we definitely don’t have the equipment on board to fix, so I am super happy we could catch that issue now.  The mechanics removed the pump, fixed it back at their workshop and reinstalled it all in the same day – win, win and more win. And big win #2 was that I could completely pick the brains of the mechanics (really to the extreme) and learned an absolute ton. I now have so much more confidence that I will be able to competently look after the engine.

We also finally FINALLY had a glorious sunny day on the weekend. On Sundays, we usually try to take a break from the boat and always plan to do fun stuff and explore the city… but every Sunday up until now we have had terrible weather. So, this was actually our first proper outing around Split. We took full advantage of the sun and warmth to do a hike through the national park immediately east of the city centre. The park is effectively a little mountain, and from the top you have beautiful views across the city and the bay.

Monday it was back to business, with one of our top priorities being to get all the light bulbs out of the various fittings on the mast so we could assess their condition and order LED replacements. This meant a trip up the mast! Being the smaller of us two, it made sense for me to go up and Alec to boss the lines from below. I climbed the bits that I could and Alec used one of the boat’s primary winches to haul me up the rest. I actually had a lovely time – it’s a great view from 16m up! I also successfully retrieved all of the bulbs, didn’t drop anything, and even got a few photos from the top :).

The rest of our time these weeks was filled with many small projects. We progressed the painting of the boat hull, worked on installing various things on deck and below, designed several iterations of what will hopefully become our solar panel mounting frame, made custom fitted sheets for all the cabins (because… we fancy), and even managed a visit back to England to celebrate Alec’s birthday with his family and also attend a sea survival course. As an aside, I would highly recommend the sea survival course to all yachties – it was incredibly valuable!

Though at times these couple of weeks it felt like we were barely treading water, we have definitely started to make some real progress. That feels really good, and I hope we can build our momentum as we look to our last few weeks out of water!