While we’ve been wintering here in Croatia we’ve been thinking about the boat work we still need to do. Not a lot of action going on mostly because we’re still recuperating from the boat work we did just before we left Corfu. We also don’t have a chandlery open here which prevents us from pottering around doing odd little jobs here and there. It’s fine – our bank account needs the rest, and boat work never ends, so what’s a couple of months off?
Last year we had booked a haul out in February for a couple months so that we could do a LOT of boat work in reasonable weather before splashing for the summer. A family emergency ultimately took us back to the UK at that time and we got locked down there until late July. Nightshade stayed safely on the hard, costing a lot of money and having no work done. When we eventually got back it was to Greece’s hottest summer on record and we had a ticking Brexit-gift clock of 90 days to leave the EU. We had to get help from a local yacht service company so that we could be ready in time.
So all hands were on deck when it wasn’t too dangerously hot to work, and this is a summary of what we accomplished:
- Replaced all the seacocks
- Removed wasp nests!
- Reinforced some of the thru-hulls and changed some of them around
- We had some fibreglassing and reinforcing to do inside on a delaminated bulkhead
- Readied an area for the impending watermaker installation
- Renewed some plumbing pipes and electrics in aft head
- Installed an electric toilet in the aft head
- Replaced the windlass – our old Muir was completely corroded inside when we opened it up to service it so we replaced it with a Lowfrans X3 (this entailed some work to the foredeck)
- Replaced the old chain with new 24mm MF chain (this was heavy work!)
- Replaced 2 bad batteries
- Got the bow thruster working again after an issue last year
- Installed a new depth sounder (this turned out to be a bit of an expensive disaster, but more on that later)
- Installed a Garmin chart plotter (we didn’t have one before)
- Replaced the tricolour at the top of the mast
- Repainted the hull stripes in a shiny grey
- Antifouling
- Polished topsides
- Replaced the very sad fenders
- New anode and a service for the prop
- Troubleshooting on an engine leak when it starts up – we now know what the problem is and it can be resolved soon
There were other things that reared their heads that needed sorting, and there are still several things we’d hoped to do that we just didn’t get to. And in between that I had the flu for 3 weeks, we had over 40 degrees C temperatures for at least a month, the guys helping us had several charter boat disasters to deal with, we had lovely guests visit and we moved 3 times! So quite a lot of stuff for just under 3 months. In the end we did leave in time – but that’s a story for another post.
Sailing Nightshade 