Work goes on …

Not on Monday though. After getting the new chain down to the dock the rain resumed in earnest and that was that for the rest of the day.

Tuesday was far more productive. The genset guy came. The old heat exchanger is leaky and a little clogged so I’d ordered a new one while we were on our NZ travels. Also, the return diesel feed lines that carry hot diesel away from the engine had become stiff so I wanted them replaced before they cracked. I wanted to have comfort that the replacements were done right so hence having someone else do the work. I’m glad I did as the work was long, hard and messy. The results are good. Raw water flow appears improved which should help the genset run a little cooler which can only be good.

While this was all going on Helen and I worked on the old/new chain. We lowered our 200ft primary chain into the dinghy and then fed it onto the dock to be hosed down. We laid out the new chain to mark off 50ft lengths so we have an idea of how much chain we’re putting out. In the end we discovered we had around 370ft of chain, not 300ft as we expected. This is way more than we need so after some cogitation we decided to separate off about 90ft of the chain.

The 280ft length, now marked off, was fed into the dinghy and then raised into the boat using the windlass. I carried the remaining 90ft aboard for subsequent storage in our aft locker.

This means we no longer need our old 200ft of chain. I found a buyer for it at the nearby 2nd hand marine store. Not a lot but enough for another box of half-decent wine.

Those two jobs took most of the day. There was another wine run in the morning. I did a motor test too. I hadn’t done one since cleaning the props and all appeared much better than last time.

We have one more day on the dock before our haulout tomorrow when all the hard work really begins. The jobs we’re having done on the boat include :

• Repairs to gouges on keel where we struck a coral head
• Bottom paint
• Repairs to bowsprit/nacelle where anchor has impacted
• Stainless steel cover for bowsprit to prevent further damage
• Overall gelcoat touch up/polish
• Replacing zincs
• Gooseneck maintenance
• Prop shaft maintenance
• Through hull inspection
• Some work to the anchor locker to improve the way the chain lays

If we’re lucky with the weather we’ll splash a week later.  The forecast, however, is not looking good.  We’ll be doing whatever work we can do to help things along and save on the cost.  We’ll also stay aboard for as long as we can stand it.