Refit #8. Cautious Optimism

I hesitate to say this, as I really don’t want to jinx anything, but it sort of is starting to feel like we’re getting there. This week was a week of big steps forward, if tempered (as usual) by some frustrating setbacks. We are getting tantalisingly close to having the boat ready to go back in the water. This week we finished priming the bare spots on the hull, which allowed Alec to start on my birthday present…

Let me back up a step. In Alec’s last post, he wrote about how he’d made ‘the most awkward birthday present request ever’ by asking for a spinnaker pole. I believe I have very much topped that, because for my 30th birthday present, I asked for the hull antifouling. Antifouling is a special paint, which Alec generously refers to as ‘poison,’ that helps prevent marine life from growing on the bottom of the boat. This protects the integrity of the boat’s hull (important for not sinking) and minimises drag so we can sail more efficiently. I really, REALLY didn’t want to paint the antifouling. Its a backbreaking job, that inevitably leads to all nearby surfaces (including the painter) also being covered in antifouling. I spent weeks trying to work out how we could avoid this terrible task, when Alec gallantly offered to it me as my present. He is very good to me indeed!! And duly this week he spent three full days painting the various coats required. Now, Serenity is looking gorgeous, and a lovely bright blue! Alec is also looking quite blue (literally). I suspect he may slightly regret his present offer, though all credit to him for persevering, and certainly he empathises with Mr. Blue now (see our earlier post #2).

Inside the boat, the electronics have been getting very jazzy. Having finished building our glorious new electrical power system, Alec turned his eye to some more high tech projects. First, he installed our new Simarine system, which is a very cool systems monitor, complete with touch screen panel! From the panel (mounted at the nav desk), you can easily see our battery charge status and remaining power time, the levels in our water, fuel and waste tanks, how much power the various systems on the boat are currently using, and various temperature and pressure readings. We love it! Setting it up was an interesting challenge, because it required running wires to all of the sensors that measure the equipment and tank levels. To do this, we had to take up three layers of floor boards so we could get real access to the bilges, and then drill many holes in many corners of bilge wall. But, success was ours! And now we can proudly monitor the amount by which each trip to the toilet fills the waste tank. Aren’t you excited to be our guests?

Second, Alec tackled our AIS system. This required running a cable down a very full cable run using bits of plastic string and much muscle power, and then attempting to decipher the instruction manual. The manual was badly translated from the original German, and includes many helpful lines such as “install and set up the unit. It is very easy and straightforward, and does not require any instructions.” Except that it took about two hours for us to work out how to actually get it working. After we finally conquered it, Alec linked the AIS system to an app on our iPad (there is literally an app for everything), so that now we have the latest nautical charts overlaid with details of all the boats around us, their names, where they’re going, etc. BOOM!

Not liking to be outdone, I also pushed ahead on a few key projects this week. Hallelujah, I finally managed to get a reasonable quote from a welder for our radar arch solar panel mount!! After WEEKS of searching – this was just the very best feeling! And it meant my many late nights designing the arch in CAD were totally worth it :).

I also finally finished one of my favourite pet projects, which was to install a new water tap next to the main sink in the galley. Many of you will already know this, but I’m a huge germophobe. I don’t like drinking water directly from the onboard water tanks, but I also hate how wasteful and bad for the environment all the leftover plastic from bottled water is. So, we bought a special filtration system that takes any old sludge and outputs pure and delicious drinking water. It has its own special tap, which looks pretty baller as well!

Epoxy was back on this list this week, too. I approached it with caution, after our life raft mounting operation had been so difficult. But, armed with a new type of epoxy filler, I set out to cure some of the problem patches in the hull. In particular, this included our rudder, which we’d cut open in an attempt to dry out the sodden interior, and one small nick in the hull underside. I filled all the gaps with the new special epoxy paste, and then added two coats of normal epoxy ‘barrier coat’ on top. Now all that remains is to prime and paint these areas!

But, not everything went so smoothly. In fact our next project was decidedly stuck! We’d noticed when we did our customs export/import sail that the anchor windlass (the machine that pulls the anchor chain in) was not turning freely. So we decided we should take it apart and give everything a good clean to get it back in working order. But, like everything on the boat project, something that seemed a straightforward and a fairly easy task turned out to be a herculean effort! The way the windlass is supposed to work is that you unscrew this cap at the top, and then all the remaining pieces (drum and all) should simply slide off. But ours had unfortunately probably never been serviced, so everything had corroded and filled with salt, and it was very stuck indeed. Trying to pry each of the pieces out was proving nigh impossible. No tool we had on board was right for the job. So, we sought out the yard manager Zeljko to ask if he had any other things we could use. Initially he brushed us off, saying that we would surely break something and that we should just get a new windlass. A decent one of these would have set us back several thousand pounds, so we weren’t keen on that solution and pleaded for any other ideas. Zeljko then dug around in his warehouse, and finally came back with a rather wonderful, if simply named, device called a “puller.” Because it pulls stuff off other stuff. A bit of trial and error ensued, but slowly, eventually, piece by piece, the windlass came apart. Aside from being quite crusty and having a lot of surface corrosion that we needed to clean off, the main parts of the windlass were actually still in good working condition! The only real casualties were a bearing and a few cir-clips that had completely disintegrated, plus two battered cone clutches. Luckily, such bits and bobs are just the sort of thing the yard manager has squirrelled away in his store room, and we were able to get replacements quickly.

There were a few other tough patches in the week, though on the bright side I do feel these are getting a bit fewer and further between as we start to properly tick some of our projects off the list. Unfortunately the autopilot, which we were so sure we’d resuscitated, appears to have relapsed, and our wind instrument is still kaput. We’ve also had a week of slippy fingers, and have lost an uncountable number of screws, washers and tools into the depths of the bilges. Most of these we’ll never be able to find, though I was quite proud of myself that with an unbent coat hanger and a bit of patience I managed to fish out a wrench that went walkabout (and found another wrench in the same place, which someone had clearly lost years before doing a similar task!).

To end the week on a high note, Alec took me out for a special meal to celebrate my birthday at a really excellent restaurant in Split called Ma Toni. It had one of those menus with truly unique (but not weird) dishes, that all sounded amazing. The restaurant was in an old wine cellar, and was very atmospheric. They even had live music on – an exceptional guitar player that sounded a bit like Jack Johnson mixed with Kings of Convenience. Plus they had this delightful local craft beer. I think Alec gives the man on the label a run for his money on beard quality!