Refit #7. Beware of the Dog

As Laura mentioned in her last post, we had gone back to the UK for a long weekend to celebrate birthdays, complete a sea survival course and also to offer our regular day of garden labour to my Mum in honour of Mother’s Day. The endless drizzle made this less enjoyable than normal, and I was grateful when Mum suggested we call it a day after lunch. Laura cleverly managed to use the sewing of our custom sheets as an excuse to avoid the outdoors, and I was considering whether I should also take up this hobby (as a defence against soggy manual labour) before I remembered how adept I am at stabbing myself whilst helping Laura pin the last sheet. Dexterity is a skill I rank poorly at, so I’ll have to stick with digging.

Our struggles in locating equipment in Croatia had led us to ordering around 30 random (and often bulky) things to be delivered to my parents’ house that we planned to fly back with us. The time we spent researching the Eurowings luggage policy was well worth it, and we were somehow able to fit everything in. This is one of those times where being married to an American really works out, as Laura generally chooses to ignore all restrictions on hand luggage since she is more than happy to beg / charm / cry her way onto planes if anyone calls her out on it. This isn’t an option for me given my British sensibilities around queuing and following rules (and inability to cry on demand). Whilst our connecting flight from Cologne was a little late, we still had time to drop everything off on the boat, test whether the sheets fitted (they did!) and whether our somewhat amateur approach to epoxy had worked on the liferaft mount (rock solid). We then retired to the flat to plan out the week, and decided that the week could be classified as a success if we managed to get two major projects completed – rigging and electricals.

Rigging is a sailing word for all the thick metal wires that hold the mast up. They are a pretty important part of the boat as without the mast it is quite difficult to sail, and if they fail underway then there is a real chance that someone could get hurt by either the wire itself, or the mast / boom falling. We had had recent experience on a course that had taught us how difficult it can be to repair the rigging once it starts to fail, and even though only one wire was showing any signs of actual fatigue on Serenity First, we had decided to follow the conservative advice of replacing everything with brand new wire since the boat was ten years old.

The good news about the rigging was it was out of our hands as we had hired some local professionals riggers, so we could step back a little and enjoy watching some them take charge of what is a fairly complicated piece of structural engineering. The obvious downside is that we were entirely dependent on both the riggers and the yard to get the work done, and our experience in Croatia so far was that nothing happened anywhere close to on time. So when we arrived at the yard the next day to find the riggers already there and raring to go, we took it as a very good omen and manage to relax a lot. They made it look very easy, taking off the mast and stripping off all the wires on the first day before coming back and reinstalling everything the next. They also gave us some good tips on monitoring and adjusting the tension in the wires so that we can start to become a bit more self sufficient in this area.

With one major project checked off, we moved onto the next one of upgrading the electrical supply within the boat. We were now at the point where we had mapped out the current setup on the boat, designed the new system, purchased and collected all the new components and disconnected the old stuff. I had a vision that all that was left would be to plug everything in and screw it down before grabbing a beer to celebrate, which I have subsequently labelled as misguided expectation #143 (and I promise myself again that one day I will learn to be more realistic). It turns out that translating my (somewhat rough and ready) diagram into reality was a three day effort. Please find an easy to follow seventeen step guide below for anyone interested in undertaking a similar project:

1. Unpack everything and lay it out where it is meant to go to check that it fits in the space (it won’t)
2. Adjust layout to compensate and update diagram
3. Join components together with pieces of string to see if they can be connected sensibly (they won’t)
4. Readjust layout to compensate and update diagram (but only partially due to frustration with how long it’s taking)
5. Screw / bolt in all fittings (what looks like wood is likely to be drill resistant, and you will probably need at least one extra hole per fitting before they actually fit)
6. Measure distance between components with cable and mark them all off with labels (note the pride felt remembering this step will only be temporary)
7. Cut cable with rotary grinder
8. Pick out small pieces of metal cable from forehead as a by-product of step 7
9. Strip cable, attach terminals and then use hydraulic press to crimp (if possible with England losing to Ireland at rugby in the background, which will ensure that this two and half hours is otherwise not wasted)
10. Install cable (which is really thick, so imagine wrestling with an epileptic anaconda)
11. For pieces that won’t fit, either unbolt and move component or re-cut wire (now is a good time to vocalise the punchier four letter words from your vocabulary)
12. Discover that earlier decision not to fully update wiring diagram was a mistake as have now forgotten what three of the pieces of cable are for
13. Retreat to bar and medicate with beer until inspiration returns
14. Turn everything on, or at least try to…
15. Balance the urgent need to finish with the need to not electrocute yourself whilst testing for errors
16. Fix all mistakes and try again…SUCCESS!
17. Avoid the attack dog whilst celebrating

I’ll admit the final step might be unique to our situation. My unwillingness to admit defeat with this project had led me back to the yard on a Sunday, having discovered that for the first time the yard would left open all weekend. I rang Laura, who had sensibly decided to leave me to it, to ask for a lift home, and was eagerly awaiting her arrival to show off my hard work. I was on the point of going to meet her in the car park when she texted me in all caps “DON’T LEAVE THE BOAT – THE DOG IS OUT”. It turned out I had stayed so late that they had locked up the yard and released the guard dogs, assuming that everyone had now gone home. You can see from the photo below, this is a very (very) big, scary dog and Laura had saved me from being eaten by around ten seconds. The fifteen minute wait to get someone back to yard to rescue me took a bit of gloss off my triumph, but by this point I was at least able to see the funny / fortuitous side of it all.

With two critical projects broadly complete, we decided that it was time to allow ourselves to focus on some more fun (but low priority) projects as a reward. Laura had been struggling for ideas with my birthday present the month before, and had decided to ask for my input at a time when I wasn’t able to give her my full attention (this tends to happen when my head is in the bilge). As such, I had expected her to disregard my somewhat flippant response of “oh, I dunno, what about a spinnaker pole?”, especially given my initial enquiries into sourcing this (somewhat old school) spar had been entirely unsuccessful. This makes sense given they aren’t that useful on the majority of boats anymore, but I was a fan since they allow you to fly your spinnaker (a large colourful sail at the front) better, and there are a couple of other items relating to long term cruising that they can be a substituted for (always a fan of efficiency).

So when Laura announced that she might have located one, my initial surprise was tempered by the reality that it probably wouldn’t be the right size, or would be too expensive, or we would be unable to transport it (it’s a large 6m long metal pole). Laura chose to ignore my pessimism, and two days later arrived with not only a spinnaker pole of the right size (and more importantly free!), but also a spinnaker to use with it. The sight of the pole in our tiny car, which Laura had transported for around 45 minutes on a Croatian highway was a wonder to behold, and I was delighted to retract my previous doubts and offer my gratitude for Laura’s remarkable perseverance in dealing with what should rank as the most awkward birthday request ever. We got a lot of pleasure in testing the pole and sail on the boat, which allowed us to recharge our batteries and prepare for (what was meant to be) our final week on dry land…