As we head towards Sheer Tenacity's 3rd birthday, (A Bring Beer and Braai outside the Roti Hut at Power boats on 11th April), we are beginning to realise why we have been working so damn hard! After a wonderfull month in Tobago, chilling out with Steve and Kim, who flew over from Mozambique, we desperately needed to haul out and tackle a refit that just grew like Topsy!
We have repainted ,all the chicken pox patches caused by the incorrect colour touch ups necessitated by of our friend Frog's ( Stainless steel genius with problems!) work in Hout bay. We have repainted the bootstripe at the correct level, and repainted the non slip deck with Epiphanes White, to replace the too hot, and uselessly slippery International Interdeck pale Grey( ! X grey, mixed with 4 x white).So far, we are very impressed with the improved non slip as well as the new cool deck, and cooler interior. We have reluctantly replaced all the B & G network kit with Raytheon; Not because we think it is superior, but because it has the best representative coverage and warranty situation around here. There are just not enough agents who carry spares for the old B & G kit At this stage I probably know as much about the inner workings of B & G Autopilots as anyone, but we have had just too many failures to keep the faith! I have however kept the B & G Hydrolic Ram ( Serviced and reconditioned), as well as the B & G Network Pilot, the PCU.and Switch, which is fully connected with a cross over link, as a backup to the new Raymarine Kit! We have also had to replace the Furuno Radar with a Raymarine Chartplotter/Radar unit, and fitted new Tridata and wind instruments. We have done all our own wiring and fitment, but have to allow the Raytheon Installer, to do the final connections, so that we an get the warranties signed off! The problems with the Icom 710 SSB have also been diagnosed, but the parts will not be available from Icom until May, so we are fitting a new, old Icom 700, to use until then, at which point we will repair the 710.md sell the 700. We have converted the Mase Genset from an Impeller water cooled unit to an electric pump water cooled unit, because I am sick and tired of crawling into spaces too small for an old man, to change failed impellers, in a stupidly designed position ! We are also fitting a High Output Alternator(100a) and Smart Charge regulator, which was suppossed to be a direct swap on the Perkins, but isn't! Two days of re engineering, and we are getting close! We are also waiting for the replacement heat exchanger rubber elbows to arrive from Miami for the Perkins. Nick Van Zylen told me they were useless ,expensive, and would fail, and he was right!! The Perkins version cost 4 x the price of the almost , but not quite, identical Westebeke ones!
We have however , also had some fun!! Right alongside us in Power Boats, we have "Ukulele lady", well know to Hout Bay sailors, and have become very close to Nick Marvin & Lynette, who have arrived here after the2004 Cape to Bahia Race and are doing a total, and very good refit.Many of you will remember how Nick Taylors video, "Singer and the Sea" kept me going as I laboured through the building of "Sheer Tenacity". Rumour has it , Via Piet Van der Westhuisen, who zipped through last week, that Chris Hull, and Sea Lion could be heading this way too! And we know of two other Shearwater 39's in the Carribbean as well, so it it could beShearwater rally time in the near future!
We have had to learn new words, expressions and accents ..eg,.. "She Vex me!", Bus up Shot, Lime, Wine, Bacanal, etc etc We squeezed in a day trip to Maracas Bar, where we had traditional "Shark 'n Bake", at the famous Richards. ( Basicaly a deep fried chunk of shark in a damn great Vetkoek,) with a huge choice of salads and spices! On another occasion we drove over to Macqueripe bay, where the tourism authorities have done a very impressive job, with Walter and Jacqi, South Africans (from Jean Marie), for sundowners. Tomorrow, all the South African contingent are heading towards Caroni swamp to see the Scarlet Ibis population, and hopefully the Silky anteater.
And lest you think its all been one big "jol", there has been a fair bit of physical pain and anguish,(to go along with the financial anguish!) I trod on a triangular scraper with my bare feet, which made a pigs mess of the boat and my foot! Should have been stiched, but it was a Friday evening, and Mary was a whizz kid with steristrips and plaster, and three weeks later I am back to walking normally! I lost a thumb nail to a Rivet gun while up the mast, and actually managed not to drop the damn thing in the process! I also managed break a molar eating peanuts, which, because of the way it broke required extraction last Saturday! At the moment I have some tropical malaise, which has the glands in my armpits behaving like painful acorns !!!!! All this is playing havoc with my blog writing, for which I feel duty bound, to apologise.
We hope to get back in the water next week, to do sea trials with the new kit, and to share a few days in Scotland Bay with Nick and Lynette, who also need reminding , that boats are meant to be sailed!!
It sounds like we've had masses of equipment failure but bearing in mind that most of the electronic kit was fairly elderly and that we have just completed a 9000mile shakedown sail, we can't complain too much. If one seeks perfection, one is in danger of never leaving homebase...............and there's a big and exciting world our there just waiting to be explored!
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