As you'll remember from last week, we were due to have an engineer out on Friday to inspect that faulty starboard engine... well, he couldn't make it due to an over-running job, so we brought forward drying out the boat by a day. I wanted to dry out the boat to a.) check the anodes, b.) have a look at the rudder as it's still heavy to port and c.) check for any growth and since we're at a drying yard, figured we might as well put it up against one of the jetties.
Now, drying out isn't as simple as it seems - you need to weight the side closest to the jetty to ensure the boat leans against it. In total, it took about 100kg to lean it over enough.
Once the water started to depart, it was time to have a look underneath and give everything a blast with the jet wash. On the plus side, our anodes are still going quite strong after almost two seasons (I put this down to our isolation transformer) although the propshaft anodes needed replacing again. I hit the rudder quite hard with the angle grinder as it was catching on the corners of the keel and it's definitely made the helm lighter to port, but still not as light as to starboard. Hmmmm. The growth isn't too bad; a few small barnacles but nothing to worry about just yet. We'll haul her out after summer and hit it with a fresh few coats of anti-foul.
Anyways, the next high tide was at 01:30 so we took off the weights, dropped the lines and motored her back to our berth.
The diesel cooker is playing up again (looks like it's just a bit dirty and needs a clean) and with the cracking sunny weather in town, it was time to plumb in and fire up the BBQ. I really miss BBQs and our Magma didn't disappoint.
Saturday was then spent with jobs - a custom chopping board to overlay one of the sinks (as the diesel cooker has taken some of our counter space), a spinnaker ring bolted onto the forward mast, a fan speed control knob wired onto the diesel cooker, some wood strips around the solar panel, and Lauren cleaning the diesel cooker. What a day. Another BBQ to wrap things up there.
Sunday was all about paint - after all the winter work, we'd trashed the wheelhouse so it was time to give it a fresh lick of paint. Two coats done, two coats to do next weekend, but it's looking good.
Anyways, next weekend we're off to Cowes on the Sunday for an overnighter. The plan is for the engine chap to come on Friday, then for us to wire and re-fit the wind generators on Saturday - at that stage, we'll then be well progressed towards being "Caribbean ready". 58 weeks and counting.
N
0 comments:
Post a Comment