A great weekend thus far interspersed with periods of utter frustration.

First up, welded a piece of stainless rod onto the anchor. Our anchor catches the bowsprit cable every time we haul it in so the new piece of stainless should help the anchor slide along it and settle into it's holder ok. Hopefully.

Next, our plan was to keep the two kayaks on the swim platform while underway. I managed to squeak one on there, but the second is going to need to live on the aft deck.

The aft morse controls needed fitting and Chandlery Rob has been on my case to pay him for the cables, so I spent a day crouched in the engine bay fitting everything. Well, as it turns out the gearbox selectors work fine but one smashed morse cable later, the throttle cables just do not work.

 

Update! I got them working this morning (Monday). I woke up with a Eureka moment at 06:00 (sorry Lauren) - basically, rather than having a nut on either side of the bit that connects to the throttle, I changed it to a nut on only the pulling side. What this means is that when you pull the throttle, it slides along the throttle that isn't being pulled (rather than moving the cable). Make sense? Well, if not, rest assured it just works.

I pulled apart the the morse controls and changed it from push to pull, but still no luck. Anyway, here's what I spent my Saturday night doing....

The throttle selectors will be going back to the supplier and we'll see what they come up with.

Things ordered:
- 15hp outboard. I found a good condition outboard in Wales that should be arriving on a pallet tomorrow. As good as the 8hp has been, a 15hp will get us on a plane a lot easier fully loaded and move us around the anchorage a lot easier.

- Two sheaves. Our aft steering is still not right and the cables are attached to the rudder stock at the wrong angle so I did some hunting, and found two sheaves in Idaho for $29. The guy's happy to ship them to me but curious as to why I'd be happy to pay $59 for shipping..... given that comes to £60 all up, and two sheaves in the UK would cost £400, it's a proper bargain.

- Rutland 914i wind turbine. Those of you who've followed the blog for a while will know all the problems I've had with the Istabreeze wind turbines.... well, I swore off that design and decided I'd get a local 6 blade version. They have a great reputation and are absolutely silent. Anyways, this one came up 20 miles away and it's brand spankers but the guy's had it for 2 years and never installed it (still in the box) so the 2 year warranty is null and void. That'd normally be a problem but ebay give a 3 month warranty and since we're leaving in 5 months, a 2 year warranty wouldn't be any good anyway (it's not like I'm going to send a wind turbine back from the Caribbean). Anyways, I paid 3/4 of the brand new price and picked it up this morning. 

So that's about it for today. More work to be done in the lead up to Christmas, three days off, then hitting it for another week and a half before it's time to head back to work.

Have a great Christmas everyone.

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Another weekend closer to departure ticks by. This weekend I needed to change the ally angle that was supporting the steering cables for thicker mild steel, and also fitting the wood to the swim platform.

The mild steel angle fitted up amazingly quickly (for a boat job anyway), so it was time to crack on with the swim platform. We re-bolted the steel supports and sealed everything with a touch of 5200, then fitted the hardwood planking.

A light trim later and I'm relatively happy with it, although it'll need another trim as it's too wide.

After that, I had a spare day so fitted the cover to the guest cabin mattress.

Doesn't seem like much got achieved, but it filled up the weekend quite easily. Anyway, it's the last week at work before the holidays then I've two weeks off to get more boat work done. It never ends.

5 1/4 months to go.

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Another weekend, more progress on the boat.

First up was painting the forward and aft trim I fitted back in November. It's one of those jobs I've been meaning to do, and finally got around to actually getting it done.

Saturday morning dawned and I went off to collect our packages from the boat yard office. The swim platform steel had arrived, as had the new waste tank (and a whole lot of other little bits & pieces).

The steel arrived in five pieces, with four of them needing a small trim to adjust to the angles of the transom, and the one large piece to be cut in half diagonally to act as the vertical support (clear as mud?) Anyway, out came the grinder and we had that all done relatively quickly, then I put my newly improved welding skills to use and fabricated up the supports.

The tide was fast then going out so we positioned the dinghy behind the boat and drilled / attached the supports to the boat. Infuriatingly, I attached the outer bolts first, meaning the inner bolts are now impossible to drill from outside... added to that, the weather dropped below freezing and the 5200 hasn't cured, so I'm planning on removing the supports this coming weekend, drilling out and fitting the inner bolts, then fitting the hardwoood swim deck.

While all this merriment was going on outside, Lauren cracked on with labeling up our courtesy flags (all sixty of them). These flags have to be flown on our starboard spreader once we've cleared into a country, so we figured we might as well do a bulk order and get them all now.

Sunday morning dawned and with rain predicted, I fitted up our new, smaller waste tank. The wood support structure below it still needs to be built, but for all intents and purposes it's in place.

 

That about covers this weekend. Being back at work means progress has slowed down considerably, but we're still on track to have everything done for departure. I also ordered up the new Aries rudder tube extension, so we'll hopefully get a test sail in over the Christmas break.

Right, back to life in the office. 5 1/2 months to go...

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