So to burst any bubbles the none cruising folk may have about life on the ocean waves, the winters are also a lot about getting the boat prepped for the coming season which includes fixing all those bits which broke the previous season, and potentially adding a few new bits to make life a little easier....
Despite having spent the last three years getting the boat ready in London the winter list was extensive & somewhat time consuming. So for those of you who have no interest in such practical things, I advise you to stop reading now. For everybody else, here's the boat work....
When we bought our Aerogen wind generator second hand off eBay the pivot bearings were shot, so we lived with the banging till Sicily, but these now had to be changed to allow us to sleep at night whilst charging our batteries. We also managed to totally melt down the rectifier which changes the AC current to DC, so this also needed replacing, when we were blasted by a 70knt catabatic wind in our anchorage in Malfatamo. On the way down from the UK we also suffered from not knowing how much chain we were letting out at anchor, which can be a little disconcerting, so all the chain had to come off the boat and marked by painting 10 meter markings for ease of reading as it shoots out the front of the boat. While we were at it, we also bought & fitted a new & bigger 33kg Rocna anchor, to aid with our sleeping at anchor over the coming years. Another major issue we'd had on the way down from the UK, was not knowing how much fuel or water we'd consumed as the old pressurised system had stopped functioning some years ago. This had led to a few hairy moments of not know if we had enough of either en route. Probably one of the most time consuming jobs of the winter, as we had to order all the new senders, drill all the holes in the tanks & once through my thumb, in order to fit them, and the wire them all in, which involves taking half the boat apart to lay the cable, and then to finally mount the displays. We also added one to our holding tank, as Turkey is very strict on water pollution from cruising boats close to shore. Next came cleaning the diesel tanks, and making sure we had no diesel bug which could block up the fuel lines. This was the third time I'd had to do this since we've owned Maya, which involves pumping all the diesel out of the tanks into Jerry cans and getting down with your arm in the tank to clean out any sludge, filtering all the diesel back into the tanks and treating with biocide. Happily this time there was very little sludge to speak of, so we can rest easy that our fuel tanks are clean of this scourge! Whilst in this part of the world the engine service also has to be done. This involves doing a full oil change, oil filter change, fuel filter change & a pre fuel filter clean & change, changing the impeller on the water cooling, and complete water coolant change. Checking & perhaps changing the fan belts, cleaning the turbo, and changing the gear box oil, and lastly topping up the greaser for the stern gland..... Oh mother! To add one final one, I also had to change all the rubber nipples in the cockpit for the engine buttons because Audrey & Bertie found them to irrisitable to pick off. Next up new LEDs throughout. One thing you soon realise is that a major part of living off the grid and living the life of Riley, means living within your means when it comes to the consumption of power. What you consume you must produce & visa versa. With the solar panels & the wind generator we have we broadly speaking can produce enough power to supply our needs, such as fridge, freezer, water maker lighting etc, however, we noticed on our way down to Sicily that lighting was chewing up a lot of our spare power, so we changed all our navigation & internal house lights to LEDs. The result has been amazing. We've been able to reduce this lighting electricity consumption by over two thirds, which will now allow us to now run a water maker even more freely. So on to the Watermaker. As Jesus was able to make wine out of water, so in these technological times we can make sweet drinking water out of salt water. We were fortunate enough to acquire a second hand Katadyn water maker from one of our new cruising friends Duncan & Caroline for a great price over the winter. The way this piece of kit basically works is by taking in a large amount of salt water, passing it through a very fine membrane which only allows fresh water to pass through it, and rejecting the larger salt molecules as a larger amount of brine as the reject fluid, simples! Well first I had to strip down the water maker replace all the seals & membrane, plumb it all in..... needles to say many a fun hour sucking up salt water priming it & adjusting the intake valves later, and a few more measuring flow rates, but we now produce a handsome 5 ltrs of sweet sweet fresh water an hour, which is a massive money saver when you don't have to be running into marinas for water..... So another integral part of cruising is not only enjoying the sea, but enjoying the hard bits you try to avoid running into, and to do this you need a decent tender. When we bought Maya she came with a little rubber boat called a Tinker Tramp. My initial scepticism regarding our little rubber ducky has definitely changed over time. You see most rubber duckys are just that, you blow them up and stick an engine on the back and away you go. The difference with the little Tinker is that they were designed as little rubber sailing boats, so they come with a centre board and sails, all the other bits. Now our little Tinker was made by Sarah Cox in 1988, so she's as old as Maya. When we left London she was all working fine, but in the course of our trip two of her wooden floor boards snapped, which I provisionally managed to stop water gushing in in Lisbon. But this winter I had to find a better solution to stop everything in the boat getting wet. My friend was epoxy resin, fibreglass matting & ply. I was able to epoxy in the large cracks then glass matted over those cracks, and finally fashion a whole new floor section for each floor board out of ply. Expoxy the lot together & cover with a layer of epoxy paint, and hey presto, we now have a Tinker that's not only dry & stable to stand in, but also plains from time to time. Throw in an outboard engine service, and we're now ship to shore mobile. (As i post this, i have to say, today we hit a large metal spike in Grand Harbour, and have managed to put a 3 inch slice into our port outer tube! The inner tube saved our little Tinker & outboard, so some major surgery required!!!)
So those were the biggies for this winter, together with the following list which stimulated the mind & body & soul over our 7 mth stay in Marina di Ragusa, so to bore you any further here the rest of the bits:
Fix the wooden shower trim, Reseal the shower, Re fix aft toilet seat, Fix Bertie's Lee cloth, Change the Water filter, Re mesh all the porthole mosquito nets. Re glue the book shelf holder bar, Clean the shower run off & sump, Fix the cabin sole by the chart table, Service both heads, Attach new mounts for new solar panels, Change the pennant ropes, Check if we have a Diesel leak, Investigate breathers on stern of boat, Change deck light cable, Re-adjust current bilge pump system adding in new Rule 2000 pump, also add Bilge pump automatic switch, Add clips for the dodger, Sand & Spray gas bottles, Fill freezer holes to stop water leakage, Change Pacerelle screws & hinges, Check the guard rails, Fix Audrey's blind, Fix Nickys reading lamp, Rewire Solar & Wind to the Victron display, Fit replacement battery Diode box, Fit aft head 240v plug, Fit fwd head 240v plug, Fix fish gutting chopping board, Fix teak car ends, Fix gel coat bumps & dinks & sand back, Varnish side rails, Varnish companionway, Varnish around hatches, Re-stitch Genoa small section, Check issue with wind speed Raymarine head unit auto helm, Replace Raymarine speed & depth transducer. And relax.......
Despite having spent the last three years getting the boat ready in London the winter list was extensive & somewhat time consuming. So for those of you who have no interest in such practical things, I advise you to stop reading now. For everybody else, here's the boat work....
When we bought our Aerogen wind generator second hand off eBay the pivot bearings were shot, so we lived with the banging till Sicily, but these now had to be changed to allow us to sleep at night whilst charging our batteries. We also managed to totally melt down the rectifier which changes the AC current to DC, so this also needed replacing, when we were blasted by a 70knt catabatic wind in our anchorage in Malfatamo. On the way down from the UK we also suffered from not knowing how much chain we were letting out at anchor, which can be a little disconcerting, so all the chain had to come off the boat and marked by painting 10 meter markings for ease of reading as it shoots out the front of the boat. While we were at it, we also bought & fitted a new & bigger 33kg Rocna anchor, to aid with our sleeping at anchor over the coming years. Another major issue we'd had on the way down from the UK, was not knowing how much fuel or water we'd consumed as the old pressurised system had stopped functioning some years ago. This had led to a few hairy moments of not know if we had enough of either en route. Probably one of the most time consuming jobs of the winter, as we had to order all the new senders, drill all the holes in the tanks & once through my thumb, in order to fit them, and the wire them all in, which involves taking half the boat apart to lay the cable, and then to finally mount the displays. We also added one to our holding tank, as Turkey is very strict on water pollution from cruising boats close to shore. Next came cleaning the diesel tanks, and making sure we had no diesel bug which could block up the fuel lines. This was the third time I'd had to do this since we've owned Maya, which involves pumping all the diesel out of the tanks into Jerry cans and getting down with your arm in the tank to clean out any sludge, filtering all the diesel back into the tanks and treating with biocide. Happily this time there was very little sludge to speak of, so we can rest easy that our fuel tanks are clean of this scourge! Whilst in this part of the world the engine service also has to be done. This involves doing a full oil change, oil filter change, fuel filter change & a pre fuel filter clean & change, changing the impeller on the water cooling, and complete water coolant change. Checking & perhaps changing the fan belts, cleaning the turbo, and changing the gear box oil, and lastly topping up the greaser for the stern gland..... Oh mother! To add one final one, I also had to change all the rubber nipples in the cockpit for the engine buttons because Audrey & Bertie found them to irrisitable to pick off. Next up new LEDs throughout. One thing you soon realise is that a major part of living off the grid and living the life of Riley, means living within your means when it comes to the consumption of power. What you consume you must produce & visa versa. With the solar panels & the wind generator we have we broadly speaking can produce enough power to supply our needs, such as fridge, freezer, water maker lighting etc, however, we noticed on our way down to Sicily that lighting was chewing up a lot of our spare power, so we changed all our navigation & internal house lights to LEDs. The result has been amazing. We've been able to reduce this lighting electricity consumption by over two thirds, which will now allow us to now run a water maker even more freely. So on to the Watermaker. As Jesus was able to make wine out of water, so in these technological times we can make sweet drinking water out of salt water. We were fortunate enough to acquire a second hand Katadyn water maker from one of our new cruising friends Duncan & Caroline for a great price over the winter. The way this piece of kit basically works is by taking in a large amount of salt water, passing it through a very fine membrane which only allows fresh water to pass through it, and rejecting the larger salt molecules as a larger amount of brine as the reject fluid, simples! Well first I had to strip down the water maker replace all the seals & membrane, plumb it all in..... needles to say many a fun hour sucking up salt water priming it & adjusting the intake valves later, and a few more measuring flow rates, but we now produce a handsome 5 ltrs of sweet sweet fresh water an hour, which is a massive money saver when you don't have to be running into marinas for water..... So another integral part of cruising is not only enjoying the sea, but enjoying the hard bits you try to avoid running into, and to do this you need a decent tender. When we bought Maya she came with a little rubber boat called a Tinker Tramp. My initial scepticism regarding our little rubber ducky has definitely changed over time. You see most rubber duckys are just that, you blow them up and stick an engine on the back and away you go. The difference with the little Tinker is that they were designed as little rubber sailing boats, so they come with a centre board and sails, all the other bits. Now our little Tinker was made by Sarah Cox in 1988, so she's as old as Maya. When we left London she was all working fine, but in the course of our trip two of her wooden floor boards snapped, which I provisionally managed to stop water gushing in in Lisbon. But this winter I had to find a better solution to stop everything in the boat getting wet. My friend was epoxy resin, fibreglass matting & ply. I was able to epoxy in the large cracks then glass matted over those cracks, and finally fashion a whole new floor section for each floor board out of ply. Expoxy the lot together & cover with a layer of epoxy paint, and hey presto, we now have a Tinker that's not only dry & stable to stand in, but also plains from time to time. Throw in an outboard engine service, and we're now ship to shore mobile. (As i post this, i have to say, today we hit a large metal spike in Grand Harbour, and have managed to put a 3 inch slice into our port outer tube! The inner tube saved our little Tinker & outboard, so some major surgery required!!!)
So those were the biggies for this winter, together with the following list which stimulated the mind & body & soul over our 7 mth stay in Marina di Ragusa, so to bore you any further here the rest of the bits:
Fix the wooden shower trim, Reseal the shower, Re fix aft toilet seat, Fix Bertie's Lee cloth, Change the Water filter, Re mesh all the porthole mosquito nets. Re glue the book shelf holder bar, Clean the shower run off & sump, Fix the cabin sole by the chart table, Service both heads, Attach new mounts for new solar panels, Change the pennant ropes, Check if we have a Diesel leak, Investigate breathers on stern of boat, Change deck light cable, Re-adjust current bilge pump system adding in new Rule 2000 pump, also add Bilge pump automatic switch, Add clips for the dodger, Sand & Spray gas bottles, Fill freezer holes to stop water leakage, Change Pacerelle screws & hinges, Check the guard rails, Fix Audrey's blind, Fix Nickys reading lamp, Rewire Solar & Wind to the Victron display, Fit replacement battery Diode box, Fit aft head 240v plug, Fit fwd head 240v plug, Fix fish gutting chopping board, Fix teak car ends, Fix gel coat bumps & dinks & sand back, Varnish side rails, Varnish companionway, Varnish around hatches, Re-stitch Genoa small section, Check issue with wind speed Raymarine head unit auto helm, Replace Raymarine speed & depth transducer. And relax.......
RSS Feed
