That out of the water time of year again

After all the fun we'd been having, reality had to set in again. It did so just as the boat was being lifted out of the water by the very careful hoist crew at Shamrock Quay.  This picture could be a copy of last year's lift except that the hull had a bit more slime and gunge attached to it:

The props show this best:

In the large travelhoist at Shamrock, she looks quite small really:

Why more fouling? Well, a year ago we had spent the winter in fresh(ish) water at Penarth, not salty stuff like in Gosport. The salt water fouling from the summer was pretty much wiped out by Penarth's fresh water. Then the little fresh water fouling that occurred over the winter period was wiped out when we re-entered salt water and headed around to Southampton. This time, it was salt water all the way....


The hoist team had a long job pressure washing the hull for us and once chocked up, the ritual fun began. This year, we had Yann from Nordhavn Europe and Roland (the Engineer from MDS, now known as Proteum for some marketing reason) with us for a while.

They were removing and refitting the hydraulic oil cooler for the stabilisers as one of the mounting bolts had started to leak a little. Nothing dramatic (half a pint a day) but it needed sorting out. Of course, it was impossible to access some of the bolts properly so Yann had to cut and then fit a hatch into the engineroom steps which involved cutting out a chunk of boat. As you can see, even the internal mouldings on a Nordhavn are tank like:

This one had lots of nice sound insulation in it to keep the engine suitably quiet in the accommodation areas. The pound coin gives you an overall idea of the thickness and for the non UK readers, the diameter of a pound coin is about 2cm. For the more precise German readers, it is 22.5mm.

The old sealer finally gave way to their "gentle persuasion" and one grubby cooler was free:

After having the cooler cleaned and pressure tested, Roland gave it a final wash through with brake cleaner - the valves in the stabiliser system do not like dirt particles at all:

By the way, it will never look that clean again so enjoy it whilst it lasts.

Yann showed off his artistic talents with a gun full of 5200. How on earth did we build boats before 5200 was invented? Any boat minded person should have heard of this stuff and/or used it, but for 5200 virgins look at 3m website.

The Welsh connection (Andrew and Linda) came to help with the normal cleaning up of the hull, stern gear etc. They sneakily arranged to be with us for a dry afternoon (very productive) and a day of gales and rain (very productive coffee drinking and shopping).

Still, everything was completed on time and the boat got relaunched as planned. Leak free naturally. The Captain and Crew's aches and pains will take longer to go of course and the miracle stuff known as 5200 doesn't help with age related issues for humans in the way it does for boats. Pity.