Just checking....

Having left the poor boat high and dry in Guernsey, the captain felt that he ought to return, do a few jobs and make sure that everything was OK. So, another Blue Islands / Flymaybe flight was endured. Once more the lovely eastern European lady was in the cabin crew and made the totally incomprehensible announcements over the PA system whilst a native speaker gazed happily at people's laps, apparently to check on seatbelts.

Warning - the rest of this is going to be terminally boring. So, if you insist on reading it, get a stiff drink now.

The work was well underway, with the prop shaft removed and some of the sanitation hoses replaced. The extra electric pump was in place in the bilge ready to be wired up. The decision was to run a separate fused feed from the batteries as the existing control panel and wiring was not chunky enough to support two pumps running at once. (We are keeping the original pesky Jabsco diaphragm pump in place, the one that eats itself from time to time and putting a huge Rule pump in as well). Pic to follow once complete.

We had a most annoying bow shoe fitted to the boat. She was built for a Danish owner who seemed worried about ice breaking so he had the towing eye / D ring stainless steel extended underwater to protect the bow. Then he put antifoul paint on it. Guess what, denuded of oxygen the stainless corroded. We removed the paint as soon as we got the boat but then had to scrape weed off the bare metal on a very regular basis. This, and the corrosion, were getting tedious. So, the M and G guys cut off the shoe below the waterline:

It had to be cut straight rather than at a matching shape to the top of it in case the cutter "caught" and gouged a big lump out of the gelcoat. Then it was filled, faired and prepared for coating.

 The coppercoat refresh had been completed in the nice weather we have enjoyed:

A really nice job, very fair finish and plenty of copper in it too. Happy with the work done by the two good guys who started out with the horrid sanding fun in a recent post. Talking of sanding, a bacofoil yacht was lifted for blasting to remove all her old antifoul. As you can see, the health and safety folks / the environmental protection folks have a different approach here:

The white stuff on the ground was not snow. It had been on the boat and there was no tenting up carried out.

The boat had been moored on the hardstanding to allow the rest of the hull coppercoating to be completed so we were now cuddled up to the stores building, giving a slightly different view when on board. Not too picturesque an area:

The captain did have one moment of unhappiness though. When he got to the boat, he found that the shorepower cable was disconnected. Brand new domestic batteries this year and despite asking for care on power supplies, this happened. Luckily the batteries had not been murdered by the fridge / freezer or something similar might have been committed on someone from M and G!

Whilst there, the main engine valve clearances were adjusted (one was too tight this time - must be my fault), the same performance was completed for the little wing engine (takes way longer though for many reasons) and some other bits of tinkering was undertaken. Just waiting on the stainless steel (Aquamet 22) stock for the new shaft to arrive.