Two weeks in and ....

... things are progressing very slowly...

The good news is that my friend Chris arrived on his junk rigged boat last Thursday having sailed down from Sines in Portugal. He's come to help me with the work on the boat which is a great help. Having built his own boats in the past he knows whats what when it comes to boats. The only down side is that means he's spotted jobs that need doing that I had overlooked. It's clearly good to get them done but it does mean that my list of jobs was even longer than I had reckoned.

Prior to his arrival I had installed the pipework needed to fit a bilge pump below decks and had re-sited the cockpit pump and was feeling rather pleased with myself. I still had to find and fit a pump but...Anyway here's pipes and the end result in the cockpit.

The grey bit is the cover for the pump and the brown bit is where it used to be before I moved it, which I had to do because it fouled the tiller.

Anyway Chris reminded me that I still needed to fit a standpipe around the rudder shaft so that in the event of the rudder bearing leaking, the water would be contained in the pipe and not sink the boat. That however meant removing the pump and pipe work in order that I could access the space under the cockpit floor in order to remove the old steering quadrant (left over from the old wheel steering the boat used to have). Something I finally managed to achieve yesterday. Tomorrow I need to go in search of some plastic pipe from which to make the standpipe.

By far the worst job so far has been tackling the windows that were leaking badly. A really horrible messy job which along with the need to remove all the gear from the lockers to undertake the work on the rudder and other jobs, has turned the boat into a building site.....

A window back in with loads of black gunge oozing out... followed by a window aperture and a window and a pretty faithful indication of what the cockpit looks like after a day's labour and a load of stuff temporarily stored on the front of the boat.

As you can see - plain sailing is some considerable way off!

Chris has fixed a number of other things and has a number more to do. Many jobs could be done once the boat is back in the water but we are being held up waiting deliveries including anti-fouling, more black gooey stuff for sealing the windows and treatment for the iron keel. Getting things delivered here is an absolute nightmare. At this rate I'll be lucky to get the boat back in the water by this time next week. Apart from the fact that I fly home on 25/10 and must get her back in by then (and ideally ready to sail), it's much more expensive having the boat out of the water than in it!