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!
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| Maple Before - Ready for some TLC. |
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| 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
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| 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.
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| Take your child to work day... |
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| 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.
