Maple's Mini Refit

Since we haven't posted much about our journey lately, many readers may not know that Maple has just recently re-entered the warm waters of the Mediterranean after an extended boatyard stay.

We had a fantastic summer cruising in Maple and she has been good to us, but being newly retired from chartering, and with our composting head upgrade completed there were a few things we wanted to take care of that meant we needed to get out of the water.

Here's the list of boat jobs completed by myself, Janet and the kids during our first mini refit. We can't compare it to our planned jobs because the list kept changing and growing as we found new things that would only take a minute.*

*Those that have ever owned a boat know that there is not one single boat job that ever only took a minute...

1 – Dropped rudders, checked rudder bearings

2 – Rebuild rudders (more on this in another post)

3 – Serviced Saildrives including oil & zinc changes

4 – Made new rubber flaps for the saildrives and installed said flaps

5 – Remove 3 below water thru-hulls

6 – Remove 2 above water thru-hulls

7 – Fibreglass 5 thru-hull holes

8 – Filled void discovered in starboard bilge (it held about 1/2 litre of smelly water)

9 – Gel coat & colour match 2 above water fibreglass repairs

10 – Replace 1 below water thru-hull

11 – Repair grounding damage on starboard keel (this was not our damage – the repairs done prior to our purchase were not as complete as we thought)

12 – Applied new anti-foul, raising the waterline about 2 inches (no – we're not that heavy, but it needed to come up about 1 inch and we're trying to avoid the brown scummy moustache by going a bit higher)

13 – Painted new bootstripe (both due to the higher water line and to cover the Sunsail blue

14 – Painted over cove strip (to hide the Sunsail red)

15 – Repaired damage on port transom (also from former charter days)

16 – Removed and properly attached transom rub-rails both port and starboard

17 – Cleaned transom rub rails & bimini rub rail

18 – Cut polished hull

19 – Waxed hull

20 – cut polished sides of cabin top

21 – Attached Maple logo to sides of cabin top

22 – Replaced stern u-bolt capsize attachement points

23 – Cleaned fenders

24 – Painted anchor roll bar to improve visibility

25 – Scraped porthole frames in preparation for painting (I'll get these painted while we're in the water)

26 – Removed sail for cleaning and repairs

27 – Had new lazybag made for sail (getting rid of the rotting fabric which was also Sunsail blue)

28 – Made drainpipes for bimini which should allow us to catch rainwater for our tanks and will also minimize the amount of water that drains directly onto our engine room hatches (and the path to exit/enter the cockpit)

29 – Disconnected starboard hot water heater from water system due to a cracked feed pipe which caused our bilge pump to run WHILE THE BOAT WAS SITTING 2 FEET OFF THE GROUND!

30 – Replaced feedline in port hot water heater which cracked no more than 2 days after the starboard pipe (in exactly the same place with exactly the same result – at least we know the bilge pumps work).

Dropping the rudders with help from friends.

The rudder rebuild begins...

Thru-hull patch, complete with newly discovered voids...

Rubrail grime - before.

Rubrail Grime - gone!

Coat 1 of 3...

Jeff from Nawii works on finishing touches.

Maple Before - Ready for some TLC.

Maple, pretty and proud and ready to be back in the water.

We were pulled out of the water on February 2 and dropped back in on February 29 giving us just shy of 4 weeks to complete all of this work...which translates to a bit more than one thing every day...wow – not too bad when I think of it that way.

In case you were worried, we haven't been idle since getting back into the water. Here are the additional jobs that we've completed in the last week.

1 – Changed fuel filters (both primary and secondary)

2 – Changed engine coolant

3 – Cleaned engine rooms (man they were gross)

4 – Changed raw water impellers

5 – Changed cover plates on raw water pumps which we noticed were significantly scored when we were checking the impellers

6 – Applied Vaseline to exterior deck hatches, normally this is not recommended as the Vaseline, being petroleum based will degrade the rubber, but it also causes the rubber to swell and I'm hoping this swelling will help seal the hatches.

7 – Installed new mast cleat to replace one I broke being dumb

8 – Completed disassembled, cleaned, reassembled and properly lubricated 4 winches (I think Sunsail's version of servicing was just to pack as much new grease as possible onto the dirty old grease.)

9 – Emptied and cleaned composting heads

10 – Complete scrub-down of exterior deck (it was grimy from the boatyard) and interior (also grimy from the boatyard)

11 – Repaired snap on helm seat cushion

12 – Washed mainsail and sent for minor repairs

13 – Ordered new spinnaker for delivery before we head out in April

14 – Met with carpenter to design and order new salon table that folds which will allow our salon to also feel like a living room rather than having us sitting at a big dining room table all the time.
15 - Cut new mirrors for the bathrooms

Winch Servicing - long overdue.

Whew – we're exhausted just re-reading what we've accomplished and are optimistic that we won't need to do this much work in one go for a while. That said, boat jobs never really end it seems.

Through all of this, the girls were remarkably resilient. School occured as planned nearly every week day. Many days they worked in the marina's club-house (called the Port Hole) and on others in the salon while Janet and I laboured on either helping them with school or getting a boat job done.  When not in school they played with other kids at the Marina or entertained themselves in the boatyard.

Take your child to work day...

The girls have turned into boat kids - a boat in the slings means it's limbo time!

They were also very helpful in cleaning, and reinstalling fenders and keeping the jobsite tidy, picking up all the little bits of trash that I left lying around.

At the end of the day, what matters is that we're currently bathed in sunshine, it's 20 degrees most days and the summer sailing season is about to begin. We love Finike and our Marina friends but are itching to get moving again and looking forward to having the girls Grammie with us as we head North in April.