Update Mid February to Mid March 2013 (Richards Bay)

Well it looks almost as though this is a monthly update, lets play that by beer and see how it goes :-)

Everyone will be very glad to hear that the hard top bimini (hard roof that goes over the saloon area where we sit outside), about which I have spoken ad nauseam because it has just taken so long to work on, is finally finished and up.  We have fibreglassed and gel-coated and fine-faringed til we are blue in the face, found out the hard way that not everything sticks to everything when dealing with fibreglass and that weather plays a huge role in when you can actually work with fibreglass.  Nonetheless, it is finally up and we now have a 2/3 shelter from the elements, requires a bit of hopping around when it rains, but that just adds to the fun of boat life, we are just trying to come up with a ditty to sing, something along the lines of you put your left half in, your left half out........

Original roof

 Originally we bought a second hand roof that was removed from another yacht as it was pretty much the correct size for ours and our canvas bimini cover was leaking and the stitching was frayed.  Also getting to the end of the boom was a problem as it required balancing on the poles under the canvas, praying that the wind didn't blow and throw you over the edge, a hard roof was necessary.  With the assistance of many people we placed the roof on the frame and it was just the wrong shape around the sides and really heavy.  Worried that we would be the cause of the boat doing wheelies we decided to scale the roof down a little, we sliced off the sides 

Sliced the sides off

and kept the centre section, then we epoxyed  it back together where it had been delaminating, fibreglassed all around the edge, fibreglassed pvc pipes on to the top to create channels which drain into pipes and ultimately into buckets - collecting rain water, then it was bolted into place and voila, we finally have a beautiful new roofish.  The next part of the plan is to attach canvas sides to the roof to cover the remainder of the saloon area, temporarily we are using shadenet while the canvas sides are being manufactured.

Trial run before final touches

New roof!!

Cat scan before final touches

Some really good news for the month was that we found a fabulous home for little Lady, our stow away cat.  A lovely couple have taken her and they all seem to be fitting in well together, hopefully she will have a much happier rest of her life.  

Preparations for Inhaca are now on in earnest as it is a mere three weeks away.  All the jobs left are being prioritized and the good news is that currently there is nothing that needs to be done that will prevent us from setting sail, thank goodness.  We were assisted in this goal by Graeme and Michelle who arrived at the end of February to give us a much needed hand to get the last of the important things done.  The steering pulley that had seized has now been replaced, Bongani (autopilot) is now fully operational and happily helping steering when we are out sailing, big relief.  We replaced the leaking port light so we should be pretty waterproof ;-)

The new toilet was installed and curtains and mozzie nets made for all windows, finally starting to feel like home around here.  We finally tested out our onboard showers and are just sorry we didn't do so before, they work brilliantly, another tick in the box.

Even managed to find a little time to do some sailing and test fishing skills, we are going to be relying on those for food on the way to Inhaca, hopefully that trip will be more successful than this weekend was! 

Provisioning is proving to be fun, we have 7 people on board for our trip to Inhaca, currently we are planning to depart from Richards Bay on 22 March and the official Inhaca to Richards Bay race sees us returning on 29 March, this is all weather dependent but very exciting.  Finding places to stash stores and figuring how long bread and water will last and where to stash the booze is proving to be most entertaining.

On that happy note, I think the next communication will be after we return from Inhaca.
Cheers for now...