OK, we realised we needed to do something to make some progress on the Priorities List. Having established the priorities and agreed to get those things researched and commissioned or ordered before going cruising, new problems keep distracting us. The urgent To Do list was growing faster than we were getting through it.
We know that owning a boat means doing maintenance work in exotic or hot places. A 19 year old boat, however well cared for, is going to throw up new jobs regularly. At the moment, everything is a steep learning curve, including which bits of metal on deck are positioned for toe-stubbing, how to stack cans, bottles and crates of food in the fridge, how the instruments work, marine plumbing (including chemistry lesson for me!) where the leaks are coming from, how to best fit the tent awning, which locker things are stowed in etc., etc.
In addition to this, we have a small number of things we know we want to change as soon as possible. And they all need researching. In short, we were beginning to feel overwhelmed and we didn’t feel we could spare the time to go cruising 😥 Something was wrong.
Over homemade lemonades in Despina’s Beach Bar one morning, we realised we needed some help. We drew up a list of things we could do, but which were distracting us from specifying the upgrades. Then we drew up a list of who we could ask to do these jobs. It was clear that IBA had no spare capacity and wouldn’t have anyone free for weeks.
We also decided to try a new schedule – setting the alarm for 7.30am, doing jobs before it got too hot. Lunch at 2pm, siesta from 3-4.30, a cup of tea and then jobs from 5pm . Then showers as usual at 8.30 or 9pm when it had cooled down, dinner at 10 or 11, bed by 1am. I adapted to this schedule when I lived in Spain and it worked well.
We were booked onto IBA pontoon for Mon 11th and Tues 12th and got through jobs well. The dinghy was really green and nasty when we got it out of the water, so needed a good scrub, as did the decks and cockpit.
An early priority was to get some more turns of furling line on the Genoa. When out for a sail on Monday afternoon, we ran out of furling line when putting it away, meaning that not all the sail was furled. There was a good 20 knots of wind, and the force in the sail meant it wound in very tightly, using up all the furling line before getting to the end. Having just had a timely reminder of what happens when the wind gets into a furled sail, we were keen to sort that out sooner rather than later. Much debate about whether to untie the furling line and turn the drum before reattaching it or to untie the sheets and pass those round the forestay to wind it up, so that more turns would go on once the sail was unfurled. We decided on the second method, still not sure which is easier!
We hoovered and cleaned below and took up and threw out the astro-turf (actually it was probably tough carpet, a practical way of protecting the floorboards, but it wasn’t for us.)
The wooden floor feels nicer and will be easier to keep clean, we think. We’ve kept the saloon rug and will look for small rugs for the fore and af cabins – and for rug grips so they don’t slip!
We did several provisioning trips – another 24 big bottles of water (on the trolley) plus gin, lemonade, tonic, as well as food. Filling both water tanks took nearly 2 hours as the water pressure is not high, especially right at the end of the pontoon.
And I fired off some emails asking for some technical work to be done, to take the pressure off a bit.
A siesta below was a bit hot – we hadn’t put the white tent awning up as we still needed to do some deck swabbing. The next day we tried the cockpit, but that was uncomfortable (Reminder to chase Takis about the cushions!) and a bit noisy. But, we’re getting more done with the new schedule. Maybe we can get back to our priority list soon? And some cruising? It’s lovely being here and living onboard, including doing jobs and repairs. It will be even more lovely when we’re behaving like a yacht, rather than a static caravan 😉⛵⛵⛵