Refit #10. Sunshine and Poo

We’ve now settled in to our new temporary home at the locals’ marina, and have definitely been a bit “the talk of the town” since we got here. Several times per day, a few of the local men from the marina will wander down to our boat and look at us quizzically (and sometimes even take pictures of us!). Most don’t speak English, but there is one funny old man, who’s antiquated and slightly Heath Robinson-esque boat is moored near us, who typified what we’ve come to recognise as a standard Croatian response to us –

Old man: “(Something in Croatian).”

Us: “Oh, sorry, we only speak English.”

Old man: (Indignantly) “Well obviously I speak English! This pier is private, no tourists.”

Us: “Our boat is moored just there.”

Old man: (Even more indignantly) “Well obviously if your boat is here you can be here!”

It’s this slightly weird thing of people responding to us as if we’ve somehow insulted them. But never mind! Despite his indignance, I am rather fond of this guy, because his boat, Penelope, is so wonderfully higgledy piggledy (a very old-school wooden power boat that has been retrofitted with a little mast, which I presume he uses to “sail?”) and whenever I walk by he is rocking out to 70s classics.

The marina is also home to what appears to be a Croatian Olympic (or at least very high level) water sports training centre. Every morning and afternoon, a slew of very impressive dinghy sailors and crew teams head out into the bay, passing just by our boat. It’s lovely watching them! Additionally, there is a very professional looking court next to the dinghy building that I’ve learned is specifically for the Croatian version of boules (a lawn-type game where the aim is, as I understand it, to throw one’s ball so it lands as close to the marker ball as possible). I’ve started calling it the shuffleboard court, though, because it is exclusive populated by older gentlemen. This is no casual shuffleboard league though, things get heated and there is much shouting and (I assume) swearing during the daily matches. On Saturday it appeared they were holding some sort of tournament, which also involved random sing-a-longs (with harmony)! Speaking of sing-a-longs – our marina is also located just a stone’s throw from the local football / soccer stadium. The local people are SUPER proud of their football team, Hadjuk Split, and many evenings we are treated (ish?) to chants and singing from the stadium. It definitely feels like we are living in the heart of the community!

On the refit side, it’s been another of our weeks of highs and lows, which I think we’re sort of starting to get used to – or at least expect? We now tend to approach projects assuming there will be hiccups, and I’ve started quadrupling my time estimates for things (e.g. “the YouTube video of this says it should take half an hour, so it will probably take me at least two!”). Projects that haven’t gone in our favour this week include:

The Hydrovane installation: We need some blocks of a specific type of plastic to pad between the boat and the vane arms, which it turns out is nigh impossible to source here in Split. Such is the way with doing up the boat in a small place!

Our instruments: Poor Alec had to take them all out for a third time, because they STILL aren’t working. I have to say I think Alec has had the crap end of the deal on projects, because the electronics are basically a never ending headache. The instruments in particular have been… tricksy. I think we’ve previously shared about the trouble we’ve been having with our wind instrument in particular. When we got the boat, the wind display showed us wind speed, but not direction. Alec’s initial assessment led him to believe the display itself was the issue, but the yard manager at MCI, Zeljko, has from the beginning insisted the display is fine. Over the last four or five weeks, Zeljko has variously insisted that it is different other parts of the system that are the problem. Initially, we trusted him, and went along with his judgements. That was up until, on his insistence, we agreed to replace the cable the runs up the mast to the transducer. After many hours and great expense, the MCI guys eventually changed the cable (though they couldn’t actually manage to run it up the main mast cable run, so they instead ran it down the side and drilled a new hole in our lovely deck to run it through…). You’ll have already deduced that of course this did not fix things. Next, Zeljko insisted it must be the transducer itself that was the problem. But, these cost about €300 a pop, so we were absolutely not about to sign a check for that too without being SURE it was the problem. Zeljko was convinced enough of himself that MCI agreed to buy to the transducer but not to charge us for it if it didn’t fix the system. I’m not sure whether to be smug or sad that this new transducer of course didn’t fix our problem! Zeljko has begrudgingly decided to finally take a closer look at the display… but as of yet no further news (he is the most impossible person to pin down that I’ve ever met). More on this next week, I’m sure…

The radar arch (stainless steel solar panel mount for the back of the boat): Our welder called me on Thursday to say he was going to need at least another week to finish. Cue frustration and a few short minutes of despair, because this seems to keep getting delayed. But Alec came up with a bit of an ingenious idea – and so we told the welder (a little white lie) that our visas are due to expire on the 13^th of April, so if he couldn’t do it by then we’d have to call it off. Luckily, that perked him up! We’d been hoping to leave Split this weekend, or at least by Monday (and actually officially start our adventure!!), but we also really, really want this solar panel mount. And if we don’t get it now, I can’t really see when we will. We’re a bit frustrated, but our lovely boat reminded us to put serenity first – so we’re delaying our departure by one more week and will use the extra time to get ahead on boat work that we’d initially planned to do underway. So ‘future us’ can chill more!

Luckily, many other projects have gone our way this week. Alec got all the lines sorted so we can actually SAIL (just a tad important!!), and has been busy putting finishing touches on many of his projects. He’s successfully itemised the old electrical distribution cupboard, so he knows exactly which wires go to every single light, switch, etc. (and with this finalised our electrical monitoring system), organised our newly christened workshop (formerly the bunk room) and tidied all tools and spares into neatly organised crates, sorted our flag hoist (for visiting country flags) and made a very fancy flag pole from which we can fly our US flag, found a home for the spinnaker pole (now it lives on the front of the mast) and designed the way to run our spinnaker system, sorted out our dinghy with all its needed spares, anchor, etc. and countless other things! A very productive week indeed!

This week was also a big shopping week. We needed a lot of bits for all our many projects, but more importantly we needed to make this house a home! Things like kitchen knives and storage boxes were high on the list, alongside myriad other items. The weather on Thursday was meant to be pretty miserable, so we decided this would be our “Janice and Joey’s Day of Fun” (Friends season 3!) shopping day. Our new sails were also ready, so we added on a trip out to the loft of our sailmakers to collect them (note the fancy hats we’re wearing in some of our photos this week are curtesy of the sailmakers). Shopping here is always a bit stressful because of translation challenges and many things being hard to find, but we just about managed to keep our heads and get all our things. We may have slightly over done it though, given we could barely fit all the stuff in the car and still have enough room for Alec!

One thing that has been a bit of an unexpected challenge about the refit has been learning to make the most of Alec’s and my very different ways of working (and not get annoyed with each other as a result!). Our personalities are quite opposite; I work slowly, and am very methodical and precise in my approach, while Alec gets stuck straight in, tries things, and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty or use a bit of brute force. This means that I often don’t get as much done in a given time period, but even so this week came together well for me too. I took the lead on the shopping front, organising the lists of everything we needed and where to get it all. This led to a second full on shopping day for me on Friday, when I journeyed further afield to try to source some parts that had been eluding us. I went up to Šibinek to a special marine store to buy many parts for our toilets and waste system, and drove all over creation looking for that plastic for our Hydrovane (still no luck…). Though I’m still working on the plastic, I was delighted to find everything I needed to be able to service our waste system. This meant that Saturday became “Poo Day” and probably my most productive day thus far on the boat. First, I serviced the macerator pump (the down and dirty appliance that pumps out the waste tank), which had been leaking badly – though thankfully we’d been testing the system with plain water so a leak wasn’t quite as dramatic as it could have been! Four hours of elbow grease and fiddliness later, I was pretty sure I’d got it leak free. I then replaced the pump systems on both our toilets. They had been squeaking unpleasantly and leaking sea water, so it was time for an overhaul. They work SO MUCH BETTER now – if you come to the boat please comment on how wonderfully the toilets flush.

Finally, I faced my biggest challenge, which was to open up the waste tank and take a look inside to assess its condition (plus add some cleaning chemicals while I was in there). When we bought the yacht, the company that we got it from told us they had bypassed the waste tank in the way they’d plumbed the boat, because they said charter guests often left these tanks full at the end of a week, which is a real pain to sort out. I thought this meant they’d stopped using the waste tank a few years ago, so I was expecting a lot of 5-year-old congealed crud inside this thing. It took me a good 10 minutes of psyching myself up before I finally could muster the courage to take the top off the tank. Very tentatively, I unscrewed the access port and peered in… and THANK THE DEAR SWEET LORD the charter company had clearly never used the tank, period. It had a decent amount of seawater inside (I think backfilled from the pump because I’d left the seacock open), but was otherwise completely clean. Biggest sigh of relief ever!! For good measure I chucked in a bottle of tank cleaner anyway, you know, just to be sure.

After a big week, and knowing we’d have to wait another before we could properly get going, Alec and I decided to have Sunday off and take Serenity out for a day sail. It dawned a beautiful day today – sunny, maybe 20°C/70°F. There wasn’t much wind, but we didn’t mind; there was enough for us to go out for a pootle! We spent a lovely few hours wandering between the islands around Split, testing out the sails and lines, testing out my newly fixed macerator pump (works like a charm!!), and generally topping up our vitamin D levels. When the wind finally completely died, we let Serenity bob while we had a picnic lunch on deck, before heading back towards our marina. In typical Croatia fashion, three other boats were all heading in at the same time as us, and it quickly became clear the MO is to race in. Our motto being ‘Serenity First,’ we sensibly decided to hold back and let these guys go ahead. This gave us a great vantage point from which to watch the carnage that subsequently unfolded as they all nearly smashed into each other (and the many little dinghies nearby) jostling for position. Once things calmed back down, we leisurely made our way in. The calm conditions gave us a great opportunity to nail our two-handed parking routine, and Serenity was soon safely back in her spot.

With luck, next week will be our last “Refit” post, and the real fun will be about to start!