Thursday 19th January...
Linda - After last week's fun and excitement with Angela, it was now time to get back to normality (AKA.... Boat Maintenance In Exotic Places!).
This began with the heads (AKA the loo). You might recall that every year Dean removes the outlet pipes and bashes them about on the quay because they begin to get clogged up and lined with calcium. I suppose it's a bit like your arteries and cholesterol. It's a job that has to be done I'm afraid. I really don't know how other boaters cope, as they are not all as mechanically able as Dean.
But first he had to fix the small leak from the toilet pump. It's always been an ongoing problem. This time he really gave it a festidious overhaul, replacing one of the seals too, but it's still not perfect. More work to do on this issue.
Working on the pump
Closer look
Here's part of the system dismantled. Dean uses some muric acid (drain cleaner) to help remove the calcium inside.
This shows' the extent of the calcium build up inside the pipe. It's caused by the sea water flush mixing with pee. It's quite hard so a good bash about on the pontoon and it breaks up.
Looking down the pipe, see for yourself 😯
On the toilet pump motor Dean found that the shaft was damaged, and is attempting to make it smooth again in this next photo. He attaches the pump to one of the boat's batteries so that the shaft will spin fast against his sandpaper.
We've been getting quite a lot of rain over the last week. Over two of the dry days Dean polished Thesee's smooth deck sections with his fancy polisher. Now they are gleaming, and every time we go outside he reminds me to admire the sparkle 😍.
Can't quite capture the gleaming beauty on a photo though
Hard work bending down for long periods
Nearly finsished, you can see the gleam now !
The stormy skies from last week have begun to clear. We were treated to this amazing view of the mountains one morning. All this is fresh snow from last week's downpours.
Wow, what a snowy view
The highest peak
So it's rather chilly at night. Last week Angela was keeping warm with the hot water bottle in bed. After she had gone home we decided to use it ourselves. On the second night we went to get into bed, only to find that the hot water bottle had split and leaked all over the bed. Well only on Dean's side luckily, ha ha. Good job it didn't split for you Angela! We decided we would try and find another, and as luck had it we found one straight away in the local Migros supermarket. This new one has a lovely soft fleecy cover. At night it feels like your favourite pet has snuggled up in bed too 💜
Maybe we should give it a name?
One of my jobs this week was repairing one of our fitted bed sheets that we had made before we started the big journey. It's started to go threadbare, but it cost a lot of money as it was custom made to fit our strangely shaped bed, so we wanted to try and repair it. Thanks to Angela for bringing us the sewing essentials to do this job. It also gave me an opportunity to use the sewing machine, instead of Dean!
Dean - One of the jobs on the list is to back flush the cooling system on the engine. I connect a small electric pump to the water exit by the exhaust and pump a special liquid backwards through the engine. The pump and the liquid goes in the tub, it's then sent through the yellow hosepipe, through the engine and back into the tub through the larger brown coloured pipe.
It foams a lot so I have to keep taking the foam away
While I was at it I decided to re-paint the engine mounts as they were looking a little grubby. Looks better in real life!
Linda - The first month of 2023 is rolling by and the daylight is starting to get a little longer. This week we were fortunate to get a number of sunny days on the trot. So good in fact that some of the boats went along to Kekova for a couple of days anchoring. We didn't go with them because for one thing, we don't have any sails up at the moment, they're still in the aft cabin keeping warm and dry.
Boat work continues, we're steadily working through the list as well as enjoying ourselves. The keep fit and yoga has restarted which means getting up early three days a week. Dean's main jobs were a continuation of deck polishing, blowing up fenders, and he's currently in the process of sanding & varnishing the cockpit table.
Over to Dean to explain...
A job I've wanted to do for a while but also didn't want to do. If that makes sense! After years of trying different treatments on the cockpit table I had finally made it look quite reasonable. However I was offered some special varnish that sounded quite good and easy to use. I cleaned the table off and applied the first "primer" coat. Bugger....something went wrong and it looked terrible.
So I have spent the last two days sanding the varnish coat off, the trouble is the table is teak veneer and quite thin so I had to be carful not to sand through the veneer. We're back to bare wood again now with a couple of thin patches...bugger. I'll start again on Monday and hopefully all will go well. If not I'm sure you will all hear me cursing from sunny Turkey. Wish me luck.
Applying the special stain layer
This layer isn't supposed to look shiny !!
Something has gone wrong
Will need sanding down to bare wood
After the sanding down, beautiful again
Not a great deal happening in the marina at the moment, although we did get 12 people at the Friday night happy hour. Things are looking up. Saturday was market day again, we found a new place along the canal for lunch and their kebabs are the size of half a crusty loaf!
Oh and today Dean finally sold the old mainsail and genoa to one of the harbour staff. We are pleased to see them go, now we have room in the cockpit once more.
Linda - Brrrrr, the temperature has dropped considerably, especially at night.
On Wednesday morning we even had SLEET.
The keep fit session was cancelled which gave us a chance to do some indoor jobs like cleaning the bilges. I'm not sure if this was what I dreamed of when Dean talked of sailing away into the sunset!! It could have been worse though, it could have been me doing the cleaning! Fortunately I am only the lackey. We also tried to steam clean the bed mattress.
Steam cleaning, without much success
Dean has spent a lot of time helping our friend David with some repairs. He owns quite an old catamaran and the hydraulic steering ram was leaking. He managed to get some new seals brought over from the UK but we needed a special "C" spanner to remove the end caps, long story short, I managed to make a "C" spanner and we set about replacing the old seals. One of the hoses had to be re- made, David found a hydraulic repair man about 5 miles away and after several cycle trips in the pouring rain the job was complete.
Replacing the seals
You can just see the home made "C" spanner at the bottom of the pic
Saturday was sunny. After our trip to the market we stopped off again for lunch along the canal.
Lunch stop
Dean bought some boat goodies, deck shampoo, teak cleaner, teak treatment, stainless polish and hose for the raw water cooling side of the engine (next year's job.... our motto is 'See it, Buy it').
Friend Kevin brought us some small springs from the UK. You will of course remember that we need these for the repairs to the door handles.
Springs
And Dean got the local sailmaker to make him a new clew strap. This holds the clew of the mainsail down onto the boom.
Old strap, New strap
Sleet on the deck windows
...and on the pontoon
...and passarelle
....and side windows
Cleaning the bilges in the forecabin
... and this is underneath our bed, strange that I find it difficult to work with out a headtorch!
....where the bow thruster batteries are
The big job at the moment is the cockpit table. After Dean had rubbed it down again after last week's cock-up there was a dry day which enabled him to re-stain the table and add the first coat of clear varnish. He intends to give it several layers of clear varnish but needs to do it on dry days, and at the moment the weather is very unpredictable, hence this job may go on for a while.
First coat of varnish
Another friend of ours, Bev, had a birthday this week and we were invited out for a meal to celebrate. Eight of us went in a minivan to a steak restaurant a couple of miles along the beach front. And we got to wear tinselly hats and silly glasses too! They don't sell wine but you can secretly take your own... so we did.
Birthday party
The next blog post will be called 'It's all about meeeeeeee'
What a mixture in this report - fromn bilbes and sleet to tinsel and funny hats. Wonderful! Lots of love, Von xxx
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