Sailing

Sailing: the fine art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going nowhere at great expense.

Friday 31 October 2014

Getting Ready for the Hard



We have only a few more days on Charlie dock before we go on the hard for the Northern winter and back to Australia for the summer.  So we are going through the checklist of preparations to store the boat for 5 months while doing some maintenance and repair jobs.

I was sent up the mizzen mast in the boson chair to secure the wind generator blades.  For someone who does not like heights, I was amazed I could do this.  Mind you I hung on to the mast for dear life as the bruises on my legs and arms the next day attested to.  Because I wouldn’t let go of the mast all the knots were tied one handed.  I will definitely need to practice my knotting skills.  Using only a clove hitch and bow line were not enough.  But what the ropes lacked in knotting finesse they made up for in bulk and it should hold during the winter storms that hit this area.  I’ll try not to think about untying them in the spring.
Eileen up the mizzen mast
A big job was getting the sails down, folded and stored in the forward cabin.   The sails hadn’t been used all season so were still clean and crisp and they all came down easily.  Folding them wasn’t too bad either but they are certainly bigger than the sails of little Solar Mist!  I washed the sail covers in the big blue bucket.  While on the boat I have been getting quite good at this hand washing caper.
It's a big sail
 
Raising the main sail
Being inspired by watching one of our neighbours cleaning and packing away his dinghy, we decided to clean ours.  This turned into a one and half day job.  First it had to come off the davits and onto the dock.  The dinghy is much heavier than we thought and we may have to get some wheels for it as I doubt we will be able to lift it with the motor on.  Once on the dock I found an out of the way spot to do the cleaning.  It was a bit of a shock to see the grime under the nice blue cover.  A good cleaning product and lots of elbow grease and it came up looking pretty good, much to the amusement and comment from our various neighbours (a good way to meet people is to do some work on the dock).  Then for another big wash of the cover in the Big Blue Bucket.  The BBB has become my friend.
Cleaning the dinghy

Meanwhile Bob has been plugging away at the electrical wiring.  He has done a fantastic job.  He pulled out at least 10 kg of redundant wires which were not connected to anything, put in fuses, got rid of excess joins and resistance in the circuits and tidied up the whole thing.  Most importantly he now knows what wires go to what instruments and the electrical system is all making sense to him.
 
Behind the 12v panel before

After

 
Before
After Bob's brilliant handiwork
The other day while we were at the marina office a huge cloudburst broke bucketing down rain.  When we got back to the boat the settee under the starboard hatch was soaked through to a puddle on the lee cloth underneath, as were all the freshly dried clothes I had placed there to be folded.  An urgent repair was needed as we have been having lots of thunder storms over the last few weeks and we certainly couldn’t leave the hatch like that over the winter.  I shudder to think what a mess we would have had come back to in April if we hadn’t discovered this leak.  Never mind, making lemonade out of this lemon, I took a Stanley knife and sliced away all the black silicate sealant from the top and bottom of the Perspex pane.  Then I cleaned all the excess rubbery sealant and aluminium corrosion off the lip of the hatch.  After several hours of this we were finally ready to add fresh black Sikaflex sealant.  What a messy job spreading the sticky black tar like substance, while carefully not getting anything on the deck.  It cleaned up fairly well with alcohol solvent but we couldn’t get it quite as neat and tidy as I would have liked.  My fingers will be black for days. Still what the repair lacks in beauty it makes up for in utility.  We now have a water tight hatch.
Scraping away the old silicone
The finished hatch
Then we had to top up the fuel tanks for winter storage.  Peter, the broker, had come along and given us some good tips on how to do this easily with no mess.  It is best to keep them full to minimize condensation during the wet winters. 
Siphoning in the diesel

Cleaning up the fuel locker
So progress is being made and I am feeling quite proud of all of Bob’s work and of me learning new skills.

Thursday 23 October 2014

The real meaning of BOAT



Domestically Songster is wonderful.  She is very pretty, very comfortable and has all the conveniences of a land home.  We are enjoying living on her and after 5 months of travelling and eating in restaurants, I am enjoying cooking meals again.
The comfortable salon
Fully equipped galley
But we want to be more than Pontoon Rats.  We want to sail.  Sadly as we get to know the hidden recesses of Songster we realise she needs a fair amount of work before we can feel confident sailing her.  I am glad Bob is so handy technically but this means most of the work to be done falls on his shoulders.  He goes from being totally overwhelmed to being a bit more sanguine.

Bob overwhelmed by the tangle of wires behind the Navigation panel
A more sanguine Bob
First was the wiring – a total mass of spaghetti.  Bob pulled out metres and metres of wire that was not attached to anything.  Slowly Bob is begining to clean up things but there is still so much to do.  The circuit diagrams are more aspirational than accurate so Bob spends his day tracing wires through the recesses of the boat. 
What are all these wires for?
But wait, there's more!
Just a sample of the wires Bob pulled out that were unattached and went no where
Bob's beginning attempts to tidy up the wiring
While rummaging around the engine room Bob found something much more serious, a rusty worn steering cable.  We were shocked that this was not found in the survey.  The implications if we had gone out motoring in the bay and the cable failed does not bear thinking about.  To the surveyor's credit, when we told him about the cable, he came to investigate, admitted he blundered badly and reimbursed us towards getting the cables fixed.
The damaged steering cable
Then the refrigerator failed.  We contacted Ali in town, who doesn’t speak much English but is a very good refrigerator technician and he came to the rescue.  To our horror the refrigerator was leaking R12.  So we got it properly re-gassed with the less environmentally nasty gas, R134a.  Now the frig/freezer is working a treat and we even have ice cubes for our G & T’s!

Tomorrow the marine mechanics are coming because the starter motor doesn’t seem to want to engage.

Thus we are learning the real meaning of BOAT ownership – Bring On Another Thousand! 

Friday 10 October 2014

Life as a Beginning Cruiser



We have been living on board Songster for about a week now.  We are nestled stern on to Charlie dock at the marina squeezed, in the Mediterranean fashion of docking, between yachts from Turkey, Germany, England, US, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.  Life is pretty busy at the marina in October as all the yacht owners are preparing their boats for winter storage.  Sails are being taken down and folded, lines and halyards washed in Salt-away, dried and stored and the always present maintenance, upgrades and repair work being undertaken.

Everyday huge cranes lift out yachts, put them in a cradle and carry them to the large parking lot called ‘the hard’.  About 1000 yachts will spend the winter months on the hard at Marmaris.  Some of the mega motor yachts even have an instant garage built around them.  
Small yacht coming out of the water
Large yacht being moved around
Yachts on the hard
This whole structure goes up in a day – wooden framework, plastic covering, vents and a doorway
While we are slowly familiarising ourselves with Songster and her systems, we are also meeting other yachties and learning the rhythms of marina life.  There is the daily radio net at 9 am where other yachties across the Marmaris area get in touch with each other, hear the weather forecast, make announcements of events, ask for help or advice and offer ‘treasures of the bilge’ – items for sale or give away.  There is the 10 am water taxi across the harbour into town for shopping and errands to the chandlers.  
Not a bad view on the way to the shops
When errands are complete, a dolmus (mini-bus) running every 20 minutes can be taken back to the marina.  Then from 12 – 2 pm the canteen is open for workers and resident yachties for an inexpensive (7 TKL ~ $A3.50) lunch.  The meals and setting are a bit like school dinners but they serve very tasty Turkish food while a rather scrappy looking cockatoo squawks in the background.  
Canteen cockatoo
The rest of the afternoon is spent chipping away at the always growing ‘to do’ list until sundowner time when people sit in their cockpits, have a drink and nibbles and talk about the latest project, where to get the best price on supplies, where the best anchorages are, who is sailing where and general tales of past cruising experiences.  Then it is early to bed so we can rise early the next morning to continue another day chipping away at the ‘to do’ list.
 
I have labelled us as cruisers but really we are novice live aboards for now. It is doubtful we will have ourselves and Songster ready to go sailing out on the water (but maybe some motoring?) before we must leave Turkey in early November.  Still this lifestyle has its moments; watching the small school of fry swim between the boats through the crystal clear water, learning and more learning on our journey to become self-sufficient sailors, growing more and more limber climbing up and down the companionway, making new friends and watching the moon rise the hills around the bay while sipping a Turkish wine in the cockpit.
Full moon over Marmaris marina

Saturday 4 October 2014

From Travellers to Cruisers



After years of research and more years of looking, Bob and Eileen have made the transition from travellers to cruisers.  We have just purchased a beautiful Oyster 39, called Songster.  It has been quite an emotional roller coaster ride.
 
s
Sonsgster sailing in Marmaris harbour

Bob and Eileen onboard

We first looked at Songster in early August while we were looking at several boats in the large marinas in Marmaris, Turkey.  We were quite impressed with the Oyster; good pedigree with proven blue water experience (5 Atlantic crossings plus a circumnavigation), centre cockpit ketch, lovely living space, lots of equipment but Bob was concerned about the age of the engine so we made a low offer, thinking we would have to replace the engine (a big expense), but the offer was rejected.   
 
Fantastically equipped galley
Comfortable and homey aft cabin
There were a couple of other boats in the Eastern Mediterranean that looked promising so we continued our travels in Turkey and eventually went off to Corfu to look at a Hallberg-Rassy 38.  This was a lovely boat in pristine condition and sailed like a dream although the living space was a bit cramped and old fashioned.  We nearly bought this boat until Bob had a sleepless night from a nightmare of being unable to reef in a storm with the in-boom furling system.  With the rationality of a daytime head we realised that we were a bit seduced by a beautiful sail, Italian hospitality and the lovely personality of the owner, Luigi.  The boat just didn’t have the blue water, live aboard features we wanted but Songster did.  So walking down the street in Gouvia, Corfu we rang up the broker in Marmaris and made another offer.  The offer was accepted and we made our way back to Turkey.

All this seemed a bit surreal.  Were we really about to buy a yacht in the Mediterranean? The short answer was yes and after lots of surveys, test sail, inspections, paperwork, international money transfer and hours of hand-over with the owners, s/v Songster is ours and we are living aboard her at Yat Marina, Mamaris, Turkey.  

 It is all a bit daunting.  Songster is certainly more complicated than our little Solar Mist.  Slowly but surely we are learning about all the systems.  At times we are overwhelmed but then some little switch or diagram finally makes sense and we chip away at our ignorance.  It truly is a huge learning curve.  Thus we begin our lives as cruisers.  
Behind these panels is Bob's nightmare of spaghetti wiring - 12v, 24v and 240v systems