The house is in turmoil, the dining room is full of boxes with radar, wind generator, electrical bits, inverter, new instruments, bimini cloth rolls and stuff for the car Boot Sale. The remaining space is taken up with Ruth's proudest possession, a new Sailrite sewing machine on which she is manufacturing new sail covers and a bimini. The intention is to take the sewing machine with us to help maintain the sails and maybe earn a bob or two. I will be taking a miniature lathe for producing those little widgets which are so essential for keeping a boat in good shape. The sitting room is piled with sails ready for a touch up with Ruth's new machine - all except for our new genoa and cruising chute, fresh from the excellent chaps at Crusader Sails.
The upstairs bedrooms have been gutted for painting and decorating ready for rental. With all this manual labour, our respective hands are now like sikaflexed leather gauntlets - not like the soft white office hands we used to have.
The boat work is making progress, we are now past the ripping and scraping stuff off putting it back on. The anti-fouling is almost complete, all 16 layers. We decided to use an ABC3 from Ameron, a successor to Devoe which which she was originally coated and seemed to be effective. It has a good reputation and considerably cheaper than the usual Yottie suspects. It required three coats of epoxy primer, two coats of undercoat and three layers of the antifouling. As Do It was in a cradle, she had to be moved to get at the areas under the pads. This required eight further coats of the noxious fluids after which the shiny new anodes were fitted - 16 of them. The electrics will require significant effort, fathoming out how they work is like an archaeological dig with multiple redundant wires with the ends taped off, solid core domestic wire all over the place and the most bizarre colour coding I have ever seen. The wiring is a combination of brown, green, blue, yellow/green as well as the conventional red and black. There is little logic to the usage, for instance red is used for both positive and negative, other wire are seemingly used randomly.
Installing the shiny new-ish Icom 710 SSB transceiver and aerial tuning unit (ATU) has caused more head scratching with a range of conflicting advice freely offered. For instance some consider that the ATU should be installed on deck for good performance, others state that it will be fine inside protected from the weather. The earth connection attracts a similar range of views. Some say is should be copper foil, others state that thick cable is fine. Some consider that a capactive isolator should be fitted to give galvanic protection, others state that this is not necessary. My current technique is to ask a few question to test if they can justify their opinion if a convincing manner, if not, they are probably passing on something 'they have heard'.
Having completed her labour of love in preparing the hull for anti-fouling undertaken in appalling weather, she has now moved on to soundproofing the engine room, a fiddly, picky job right up her project manager type attention to detail. We do seem to have complimentary skills, Ruth likes varnishing, painting, sail and canvas work, I do the technical stuff, mechanics, electrics and we both like sailing. What a team.
Our home social life has suffered; we receive plenty of kind words and encouragement, but haven't had anyone round to the house for months except for some of our wonderful immediate neighbours. Social visits are similarly restricted as we plough through the lists of jobs. During the lift to complete the anti-fouling, we were moved to a particularly eye-catching position in the Marina, close to the road. As a result, we get regular visits from well-wishers and offers of tea.
The next job is to find a suitable letting agent and get our heads round the intricacies of tax law, residency, national insurance contributions. Again much conflicting advice is freely given. It seems that bobbing around the oceans with no fixed abode causes complications and conflictions with worldwide tax avoidance legislation.
Our biggest win for January had us grinning for days afterwards. After another days slog on the hull, Ruth was tipping some stuff into a skip in the Marina and spotted the edge of a canvas folio. A little further investigation revealed a most amazing collection of over 150 slightly elderly (early eighties) Admiralty maps for Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong, east and west coast of South America, Cape Horn area and routing charts for most of the Pacific and Atlantic. Some corrections may be needed but who cares. Astounding what people will throw away. Here, you can see our new map collection, along the the new teak instrument pod and the Ruth's flag making material.
Do It goes back in the water on 14th Feb, it will be a great relief to be able to clean off the accumulated dust and blackberry coloured guano from her prolonged stay ashore. Things are looking up.