Engine radi!
At bloody last - our previously faithful Yanmar 4JH3E has roared into life and the collective sigh of relief is louder than Porto Montenegro's building site.
Yeee harr!
Yes, finally, Tim gave in (under pressure) at bodging a new end on the oil cooler and we bit the bullet in buying a new Yanmar part (£550 - gutting to pay that for something which wasn't actually broken, simply the end had sheared off). But anyhow, Tim managed to get everything put back together (my other fear, seeing as it was months since he'd taken it apart) so I take it all back - yes Timmy, you are amazing really.
Sadly, as our charter season starts next Saturday, our dreams of spending April on mini-cruises and shakedown voyages up and down the Montenegrin and Croatian coasts have been binned and we're straight back into tours of the bay again. BUT, we are definitely blowing off those cobwebs in May and running down to Greece for a 10 day or so stint. Ridding our minds of our bogey voyage of 2007 - it is something we need to do. Adventures - yeeh har!
In the meantime, we've got to get the boat hauled, cleaned, antifouled etc this week, though the Bura is blowing and forecast to stay for days on end. I know it is quite useful to have some wind when we are a sailing boat but it's not good for getting onto travel-lifts.
In terms of our job list, here goes:
- put engine back together AND get it working - TICK!
- Install galley plumbing - TICK! and we ended up ripping out the entire galley plumbing and sink plumbing in heads and redoing the whole lot. Finished off the only drip with some Kraken self-amalgamating tape - brilliant stuff. So everything is bright, shiny and drip free.
- varnishwork in saloon (to clean up the mess I made by exploding a canister of PU foam all over the boat due to not reading instructions (they were in Serbian) and removing a bung that shouldn't have been removed) - TICK!
- new ceiling panels in heads/hooks (the area of the boat between the galley and heads where we hang our coats) - erm, nope.
- source someone to make all new cushions and covers for saloon - TICK! Not only sourced but completed and fitted and they look bloody great. Thank you Dragan (Mr Cushions) - a top job done.
- source new mattress for bed, cut to odd size and imported from England (probably) -TICK! It is currently sitting on friend's boat in Greece but soon to be on ours.
- Re-vamp Billy, our aging tender so he won't collapse when we strap on our new outboard motor (yet to buy) - this week.
- extreme clean and polish of outside of boat - being done on Friday.
- add boatname and stripe - when it arrives with Michelle - so next week.
- revamp coachroof and polish up - this week
- not only 1 but TWO new fridges. Found a great fridge repair guy who not only repaired our crap old fridge but our huge old old fridge which has been my pan cupboard for the last 4 years. Ideal for cold drinks on charter. Our Mastervolt system has broken though so no idea how much power it consumes at the moment. Next repair job.
- jury-fixed sails in lieu of new ones. We are getting new sails this summer but not in time for Greece. I'm slightly loathe to use new ones for charter anyway - seems like a bit of a waste.
- Used a big tub of car epoxy to rebuild a rotting stern locker. yet to finish (of course).
- Used an untold number of bottles of Captain Tolley's Creeping Crack cure in an attempt to fix the leaks. Minor joy but the deck is the problem. WE MUST RE-LAY DECK in the autumn, it will (hopefully) solve many of the leak issues.
Yet again, the locals look on, aghast, at the weird, dirty Engleskinja.
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