A final check of the through hull fittings, and the thumbs up was given for Do It to start the short travel-lift journey from the hard back into the water. The unnerving creaks as the webbing straps took up the weight, the heart stopping crashes as the wooden props fell away from the hull, then the most scary moment of all - would the new depth transducer leak? or the log transducer? Or the re-plumbed sinks? or the new salt water inlet? Or the re-plumbed head? Would the dripless shaft seal live up to its name?
For half an hour all was calm - dry bilge = happy husband..... until..... water started rising in the engine bilge. A quick taste revealed fresh water - and the crisis was downscaled to a minor panic. Turns out the only thing sealing the stainless steel water tank was the 20 years of gunk at the bottom of the tank - which I'd scrubbed & cleaned the day before. Another case of one job being crossed off the "to do" list, creating a new job.
The biggest achievement of the past week has been the installation of our new holding tank - "christened" last night! We arrived at Tek-Tanks on Thursday to collect the tank, and almost dropped when we saw the size of it. "You did make a mock up of it, didn't you?" asked Mr Tek-Tanks. To be honest, no we didn't - but we did measure up 15 times. We lugged the monster tank onto deck, removed the companionway stairs, lowered the beast into the boat and took a deep breath.... With millimetres to spare, the tank just slid into position - a miracle! All that was left to do was for Angus to transform huge loops of "poo pipe" and the south coast's total supply of jubilee clips into an extremely neat network of plumbing, and for me to service & re-assemble the head. Lovely job - my speciality!
On the home front, the letting agent has been selected, more rooms re-decorated, the Type 3 NI contributions lined up, NRL1 forms obtained.... what Angus describes as the "dull but worthy stuff". The "to do" list on the kitchen wall is slowly turning green - but is likely to still have a few "work in progress" & "not started" tasks outstanding at "go live" (once an IT project manager, always an IT project manager...). As with all good projects, we have recognised that we will not complete everything before we go, and have started classifying the remaining tasks into "must do" before departure, "nice to do" before departure and the rest - to keep us busy over then next 5 years!
Post Script
Monique promised us that wherever we go with Do It, we will meet people who remember her from her previous life. Well, it's started before we have even left Southsea Marina.... I was hailed in the yard on Saturday by Hilary & Dave - who had also made the trek down to Aguadulce in Spain to view Do It when she was on sale. Yet another reminder of how small (and friendly) the sailing world is. Can you imagine the equivalent in the shore based world? "Hi there - I see you've bought No.34 - we looked round that house too....". "Really?! Do come in for a cuppa & share house buying stories". Hmmmmm - maybe not!
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