First up was sorting out some mildew under the aft cabin bed. This has been caused by a combination of the colder weather and there being no airflow holes in the bed base. Cue a morning with the holesaw and drill, and thirty holes later, the problem seems fixed. I'm not too worried, as after this winter, we don't plan on being anywhere too cold for quite some time....
Next, the foam arrived for the forward cabin. Those lucky folk who come visit or crew for us will get this cabin - it's pretty comfy if I do say so myself. Anyways, foam cut out and now just needs covering.
The Mikuni diesel heater has been quite useful this year but wasn't heating the salon too well (where we spend most of our time). Anyway, I removed the wheelhouse outlet and now the rest of the boat is much warmer, with the wheelhouse warming up a bit slower as the warm air rises there.
A replacement battery monitor was next. We spent a lot of money on a whizz-bang Merlin setup - frankly, it's been pretty average and the battery monitor was pretty pathetic. Onto ebay it went and we picked up and fitted a new Victron unit, which gives us a lot more info (% total, % remaining, watts and amps being used, amps used since last recharge). Plus it's blue. Awesome.
We've decided not to use the davits (courtesy of the Aries wind vane) so the dinghy needed a new home on the foredeck. To fit though, it needed to be 2ft shorter so a week or so later with the angle grinder and it's now all done and ready to go.
We then had a drizzly day so I cracked on with some wiring. With the wind gen's both now removed (DO NOT buy an Istabreeze - they are rubbish), we needed to clean up the wiring area and also wire in the watermaker - both of which are now done. The watermaker now just needs to be plumbed in; a perfect job for a drizzly winter day.
On that same drizzly day, we pulled apart one of the forward cupboards and removed the diesel day tank that was installed to supply the Dickinson (another useless item). This now cleans up another space for food storage - likely baking items due to the location.
Same drizzly day - I fitted some hatch surrounds. This has been a job that I've needed to do for AGES and finally ordered in some thin ply to get it done.
The sun then came out so the forward genoa supporting line was replaced with 7x19 wire instead (much less likely to wear through).
Last up, we worked on the aft helm - the steering cables were binding on the autopilot sensor support, so we flipped it around and upside down, and it now works (and clears the cables). I made a quick visit to our local wood yard and grabbed a bargain on some hardwood to build the Morse control base for the external helm. This will make Chandlery Rob happy, as he sourced some throttle and gearbox cables for us, and I need to hurry up and see if they fit. Best be keeping our chandlery man happy....
Our courtesy flags also arrived this week - all 58 of them to cover our trip around the world.
We also ordered a few bits - both rope cutters (to be fitted at the haulout) and.... the wood and steel for our swim platform. I'm planning on fitting it over the next two weekends and hopefully, we'll be able to fit our kayaks on it.
So that's about it really. 25 weeks to go (17 weeks 'til haul out) and whilst we still have quite a few jobs to tick off the list, progress is coming along very well. Back to the office tomorrow though so the next update should cover off the watermaker....
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