Almerimar - March - Getting ready for departure

Tuesday 5th March…

LINDA – This week started with quite a lot of organising. I had brought Jade’s Wedding Invitation back from the UK with me, and we thought it was a good idea to get some hotel rooms booked. Monday we returned the hire car to Almeria. We were also busy getting ready for Thesee’s lift out and I just about had some spare time for Tina’s yoga session on Thursday. We have the ideal location for it, on the grass in the park looking up at the beautiful palm trees against a clear blue sky, with beach and sea only a few yards away. It’s just idyllic, and quite surreal to think this is (or was) February.

This is the perfect spot for our yoga sessions

Friday arrived and we were booked for lift out at 8am, so we were up in plenty of time. We are so well tied up to the quayside it takes a while to unravel all the lines. On arrival at the lift-out dock there was another boat already waiting to be lifted. We had told we would be first out, Dean was not amused. We had to mill about waiting mid waters whilst they lifted the other boat, then also launched one more boat, before we could go into the crane slings and onto dry land. 

Dean ready for the off from the quayside

Thesee's first Spanish lift-out

Our friend Ant taking some video recordings

Soon be in our new spot

So we were ashore by about 9.30am, and Dean soon got down to the business of checking things over. The hull was fairly slimy but the prop, bow thruster, and top of the rudder were choked up with barnacles. Obviously sitting in the same berth since we arrived here last October has taken its toll. A big issue Dean noticed was that the cutlass bearing on the prop shaft had too much movement. Normally it should only move about 1-2 mm but he found it actually had 4-5 mm play. We only replaced it four years ago so this was an unexpected problem. First job after the yard had jetwashed was to give Thesee's bottom a good scrub over.

Crusty looking prop

Barnacles on top of the rudder

Yuk...the bow thruster

More barnacles and sea creatures 

on the other side of the rudder

The new 100 metre anchor chain had been delivered on a pallet by the boatyard and was awaiting our attention. We set about removing the old chain and warp and fitting the new chain. We were pleased to see that it all fit into the chain locker. Next job was to affix the colourful depth markers at 10 metre intervals. This took us a while as we had to lay it out all over the floor. Afterwards, Dean attached the anchor swivel and the new anchor and we pulled the lot up into place. We were pleased to see that all the chain fitted into the locker. The anchor bracket needs some modifications and this is in hand at the moment. More info to follow on this subject.

It's a big bag full of new chain, delivered to us on a pallet

The anode was still hanging on, just about

New anode on the left, old one on the right.. Yikes!

Two of the seacocks outlets have become pitted

Need to investigate this further

Marking the anchor chain at 10m intervals

After spending the weekend discussing what to do about the cutlass bearing, Dean decided it had to be removed and replaced. Fortunately they had one in the shop here in the yard. He tried in vain to remove the old bearing without removing the prop shaft but it wouldn't budge, so he had to drop the rudder so that he could slide the prop shaft out. What a big job this all is and took up all of Monday and it's still not finished yet.

 Propellor off and on the floor

Next to dismantle the rest of it

Almost there

Couldn't have done it without this tool Dean had made at work 

 The rudder was too close to the floor

Dean had to dig a hole in the ground to drop it into

Now to remove the old cutlass bearing

It was stuck solid and he had to saw it out

Here it is before it finally got removed

Rudder's sitting in the hole

What a mess now the cutlass bearing is finally out

Now to fit the new one

DEAN – Well I’m sure Linda is letting you know that we had Thésée lifted out this week for our yearly or should I say 10 monthly maintenance. All went well with the lift and the bottom looked reasonable considering we have not moved for four months. We went for breakfast while the yard was jet washing the underside. It was midday when we were ready to start work. The yard here is fine grey gravel and they wash the boat were they put you, so of course there is a load of grey mud around the boat. It takes a day or so to dry out but the mess is frustrating.

I scrubbed the bottom down with a scotch bright type cloth to make sure all the growth was off which was back breaking work. I always check the rudder bearing which is all OK and the cutlass bearing…yikes too much play, more on that job next week.

The mucky job of hull scrubbing

Some time ago we had some new decals made, I washed down the sides and started to put the decals on. All went quite well, not perfect but OK. I found that late evening or early morning was best as the sun is not too hot then to hinder the process.

First decal going on....the Beneteau seahorse....and it's a BIG one

 Looking good on Starboard

Here's the port side

I'll write more information regarding the cutlass bearing next week when the job is finished. Next job....polish the hull.

Tuesday 12th March…

LINDA – This week on the Adventures of Thésée it’s been a week of graft for Dean. He overcome last week’s unexpected issues with the cutlass bearing and having to drop the rudder, and everything was back in place again within a couple of days. That meant he could carry on with the work schedule. Meanwhile I took the chance to get Saffy into the hairdressers now the weather is really hotting up. She had a lovely short back and sides and is looking very pretty again. That’s one less job to worry about before we leave Almerimar. I’ve also been keeping a close eye on the weather in preparation for journey planning. We will need a few days back in the water to get the boat back into shape and get the sails back on, then there’s a load of washing to do and shopping. The local supermarket has been closed for refurbishment and our food stocks are looking dismal. I had to take a bus journey up into El Ejido to get basics from Carrefour. We can’t have that little Saffy perro going hungry.

Saffy Spotty Perro in the park after her haircut

Dean decided he should service the bowthruster propellors as we’ve never had them apart. We couldn’t understand why this had never occurred to us before. In no time Dean had given them a good once over followed by a coat of antifoul. Much better now by about 100% I would say.

The bowtruster with props removed

Here's the props, looking like new now

Rosa, one of the Spanish ladies I know from ‘ladies in boats’ offered to host us all and our other halves to a BBQ at the local Club Nautico in the marina. She races her boat and was eager for us all to attend, so Saturday night about 30 of got together. We all made a dish to take plus supplied our own BBQ meat. My job was to make a Trifle, plus I made some Pineapple Upside Down fairy cakes, and we took a load of chicken skewers for the BBQ. It was a great night and a lovely way to kind of end our time here as a lot of us will be heading off within the next few weeks. Rosa’s son showed us how he could solve the Rubik Cube BLINDFOLDED. It was incredible to watch!

With some of our Swedish and British friends

 Plenty to go around

 Joyous 'barmaids'

We had a full table to choose from with everyone's help

Cindy and I keeping our eye on the men cooking

Rosa's son blindfolded solving the Rubik Cube puzzle

Dean will describe some of the work he’s been doing, however I have one further job to tell you about. Today we (I have to take some credit as I stood guard at the bottom of the ladders) drilled and fitted a new mast halyard exit fitting.  We’ve been planning this for months now. It's to hold a spare halyard incase we ever get one snap on us. So this job entailed Dean drilling and cutting a slot in the mast about 10cm long, whilst standing at the top of some ladders on top of the deck. Then I had to hoist him to the top of the mast so that he could thread a new halyard down inside the mast. So that the halyard would drop down inside the mast, he affixed some bicycle chain to the end to give it some weight. He’s been carrying this chain around with us on Thesee for years now, and today it well and truly earned its keep. Once the halyard was lowered inside the mast to the required distance, I lowered him back down the mast to the slot and he had to fish out the halyard with a coat hanger. The whole technique was performed to perfection and after a minute or so he managed to fish out the bicycle chain and so the rest of the halyard followed. The job took us a few hours but we were so pleased with the outcome. Here's some photos.....

Ladder secured, now to mark out the hole

Time to drill.. Yikes!!

Holes drilled now

With the jigsaw to cut the slot

There you go, now for the fitting

Howzat? 

Can you spot Dean in his blue overalls up the ladder?

The finished job with a brand new yellow halyard thread through

DEAN – I’m too old for all this yearly maintenance! After fitting the cutlass bearing and putting the rudder and prop shaft back in place I needed to press on with the other work we had planned while we are ashore. As you know we have the new chain and anchor now. I had some new bow rollers made a few weeks ago but I wanted to make sure the chain couldn’t jump off the rollers, so I had a 10mm stainless loop made to fit on top of the bow roller. This was welded in place by the local stainless man and it incorporates some anchor stops also. Now when the anchor is stowed it locks in place with a pin and tension can be taken off the windlass.

 The prop re-assembled and nicely greased, ready for some action

The new SPADE anchor in situ on the new white bow rollers

prior to the stainless loop being welded

 The safety locking pin bracket now turned round 180 degrees

to fit nicely with the anchor shaft

Now with the stainless loop fitted 

Note the rubber stoppers help to give stability

While doing all this I noticed that the forestay rigging bolt was very close to the anchor swivel when it is launched. A simple fix I thought by swapping the bolt round. The trouble is I had to slacken all of the rigging and let the mast lean forwards to pull the bolt out and then turn it round. It all went well in the end but clean underpants now needed! Linda was a whizz when it came to re-tensioning the rig. We took a note of the amount of turns we undid the turnbuckles by and also measured the amount of thread though with a Vernier.

Attempting to lift the roller furler to get at the rigging

The bolt that holds the forestay rigging in place

This is after we had successfully turned the bolt around

Polishing, polishing, polishing. Three days of polishing! Thesee looks lovely now though. Even the workers in the yard commented how well the boat looked after my mammoth polishing session. The trouble is that all the now blue cutting compound flies in the air and lands on deck.

How shiny is this? Gleaming 

We re-launched today (Wednesday 13th) and I finished off a couple of small jobs, tapping the mast, no not that tapping. Tapping to take two M8 bolts that hold the new halyard clamp and while I was at it I drilled out the rivets that hold the inspection cover at the bottom of the mast, I replaced the rivets with M6 bolts and then cleaned all the bits out from inside the mast. All this before cleaning down the decks to get rid of all the drilling and sawing swarf and of course the blue spatter from polishing.

 Quickly antifouling the base of the keel before relaunch

On the move now

The new cam on the left for the spare halyard we fitted

With the bolts tapped

 

 New line running through the metal add-on I made

Tuesday 19th March…

  

LINDA - So as Dean said last week, Thésée was relaunched on Wednesday, the only boat going back in the water that day so it was an 8am start again. The boatyard guys don’t hang around. Once the boat is half suspended back in the water they called Saffy and I back on it. Dean was still in the office paying at that point but he made it in time, and before we knew it we were floating and they had the bow lines dragging us along out of the slings. Wow! I even had to shout to Dean to see if he had started the engine, he had of course. It was all rather hurried but there were no hiccups so I can’t complain. 

Friday was really calm and on the afternoon we put the two foresails back on. There's a lot more room in the aft cabin now! It’s all about getting Thesee ready to set off on the next adventure, and so final preparations are well under way. Dean gave Thesee a real good wash down, and fitted the rest of the mosquito screens to the small portholes so that they don't need to be removed with the hatches closed. Thesee’s cupboards were bare so we’ve been busy restocking and doing laundry. Fortunately our local supermarket re-opened on Thursday after its big overhaul.

The staysail going back up

 Now for the genoa

Mosquito screens in situ on the outside of the portholes

On Saturday it was all action here when the police sped into the marina on their boat causing quite a stir. They were after a small boat on the next pontoon to us and three police cars also turned up. We didn’t find out what was going on but it wasn’t the normal thing you see every week. 

Rosa (one of our Spanish ladies in boats) offered to take us and three others on a greenhouse tour at the weekend. She took us to about five different greenhouses and we saw a large variety of peppers, tomatoes, aubergines, and watermelons being grown. They don't use insecticides, instead they buy good insects to eat the bad insects. They also buy bees to do the cross-pollination thing and we watched them at work. It's all very intriguing. Rosa works for the company and one of her tasks is to provide reports on the quality and integrity of the products. Afterwards she took us to her offices and the factory production line where we witnessed the peppers being packaged and boxed ready to send all over the World.  I have to say it was quite something. Peppers galore!

The greenhouses are massive 

Peppers ripening

Linda's favourite.....orange

The bumble house (beehive)

 Time for tomatoes

 Wow, these toms are massive

Dean's on the red peppers 

 Tomato vines

Watermelons now, they need extra bees...

 ...well there is a big area to cover

 The view from outside

 The greenhouses go on for miles and miles and miles

Aubergines grow black, but peppers grow green and then change colour

A few boxes folded and at the ready

Now inside the factory proper

....and on my dinner plate...picked fresh only 2 hours beforehand

So this week we received our new Ship’s Registration card and ICC certificate. They have to be renewed every so often and we were pleased they arrive from the UK (thanks to Claire) otherwise we would have been sitting here waiting for them. Also, you’ll never guess…. Our replacement hotplate arrived too! Albeit they charged us 12 euro’s postage. Thanks to Dean for not giving up on this issue and for nagging them into submission for the replacement. 

DEAN- Well as Linda said, I had to wash the boat down after being re-launched. Anyway we're nearly ready to leave and continue our adventure. This morning I did an engine re-alignment. You remember this is because I replaced the cutlass bearing. Anyway all went well. It’s not a difficult job, but requires some patience. Why me then?

Front engine mounting, 
right hand is inside the engine bearer holding the spanner!

Now set in a new position

I had to move the engine about 6mm from its original place, the engine mountings are adjustable so it’s not a big issue, and moving 6mm sounds a lot but at one end of the engine 6mm translates to a fraction of a millimeter at the other end. I used a feeler gauge to check the gap between the prop shaft coupling and the gearbox coupling. Once the measurement is constant around the mating faces it’s done. The recommended is 0.100mm I set it to 0.050 mm. It’s awkward to get at as with everything on a boat but hopefully all done now and double checked.

Checking the mating faces with a feeler gauge

When we first bought Thésée I noticed that there was two of the prop shaft bolts missing. Pity the surveyor didn’t notice either! Now having replaced the bolts and ever since then  I have marked them with nail varnish. That way if they move I can tell instantly by just looking and do something about it. 

Always mark the flanges so they go back in the same place.

Nail varnish visible on nut and bolt also.

Once all the adjustments were made I had a quick clean up and checked the stern gland, luckily young Summer gave me a McDonald's drinking straw some time ago and this is ideal for squeezing a little silicone grease in to the stern gland seal.

The best Item on McDonald's menu

Oh well dinner is nearly ready, peppers again I think!

Tuesday 26th March… Not a lot to write about this week. We’re still here in Almerimar, I’m getting fed up of saying that now. Weather wise we’ve had a fabulous 3 months over winter but this week it’s been very cloudy and windy albeit still warm, and at the time of writing we have a gale going on with 50 knot gusts.  Oh the joys of sailing. Now let’s see what we’ve been up to….

Dean was at a bit of a loose end having completed all his jobs. He was helping out a friend of ours in the yard, supplying some specialist tools to remove a couple of solid nuts and bolts on their propellors. Another friend of ours was selling some yellow fuel container so he bought those too. More items to store in the lazarette me thinks. Dean also treated himself to an impact screwdriver. His workshop keeps growing in size.

Happy with his new toy

We did the quiz on Wednesday night and I’ve been at Yoga for a couple of mornings with my new nextdoor neighbour Lee.  I’ve been keeping myself entertained with some family history research. I thought about doing a jigsaw but I really don’t feel in the mood for it strangely.

We did the weekly shop at the newly refurbished supermarket. They have these specialist trolleys that die if you try and wheel them out of the car park. So after having this happen we had to transfer all our shopping onto our little trolley. What a pain and a nuisance.

What a lot of shopping you have Dean

Friday night we went to Mario’s Bar and the place was literally deserted. We were in a group of about 10 people and that was it! One of our friends who was there had brought their new puppy with them. His name is Skipper..... a new friend for Saffy.

Here's Skipper in the pub

Last night we had a new Spanish neighbour come in to berth at midnight. I was oblivious in the land of nod, but Dean was awake and keeping his eye on the new arrival. This morning whilst they were away from the boat one of their long cockpit cushions went flying off with a gust of wind and ended up drifting off in the water across the marina. Fortunately we kept an eye on its travels and when they returned I comically related the story to them in ‘fluent sign language’ of course.

The weather site we follow is called ‘Windy’. At the moment the strong easterly wind  we’re experiencing isn’t going to turn in our favour for at least another week. We want to spend a couple of nights at anchor after we leave here so we need to make sure the weather is favourable. There are a few boats here with the same idea and everyone we talk to are just biding their time. Looks like there will be a mass exodus from the marina once the time is right.

Monday 1st April…  Well it’s been a right old windy week here. Everyone’s fed up with it. To pass the time Dean did a bit of polishing. He had the ceiling lights down, gave them a good polish and now they look brand new again.

Battered palm trees during one of the windy days

Re-fitting the lights after a good polish up

Sparkly bright again

Another little job he found to do was drawing an anchor on the anchor buoy. What do you think of his artwork?

This week our friends on Impavidus have been in the boatyard and so we've been popping in every day to see how the work's going. Here's a photo of their beautiful doggies Lady & Oscar keeping an eye on the boat.

They can't wait to get back on board

The new pub called The Galley opened this week and so the Saturday night quiz was back on again. Our team was back on winning form, yippee. That’s two bottles of wine in one week. What a great way to end our stay in Almerimar.


This will be the last post entitled Almerimar - March - Getting ready for departure.

The next post will be called 'Starting the 2019 Big Adventure', and it will be back to a daily one!