Our sailing plans have been thrown up in the air again!
No, not Brexit. Nor Covid-19. Not even the crazy little Tsar. Yet!
No, the delay to relaunch is actually for a much more pleasant reason: ‘The Adventures of Missy Bear’ has won the 2021 ‘Lacey Trophy’. This is an award by the Cruising Association (CA) “for the best member’s website or blog covering cruising in the year”!
A cynic might say that we might have been the only entry, as many people postponed their time afloat last year. I think we only saw about eight British sailors all season in the Med. But we are not cynical and will accept the prize (a certificate and “commemorative glassware”) with much grace. [Alix: actually, we’re really chuffed].
The log judge (Duncan Wells, RYA instructor and author) will say a few words and the award will be a presented by the yacht designer, Rob Humphreys, who will also be giving a talk. For non-yachties, Rob is quite a famous yacht designer having started his company in the early 1970s. Not quite Howard’s Way, Rob’s focus has been on racing yachts. His designs include the catamaran ‘Kingfisher’, in which Ellen MacArthur - my sailing hero - gained second place in the 2001 Vendee Globe (a single-handed, round the world race). He has also designed luxury cruising yachts, including Oysters, which are hand-built in Norfolk and Southampton. He is a bit of a British design and manufacturing legend, albeit not really known outside the industry. I expect it will be uncool to ask for his autograph, on our printed book of the blog, but I’ll do it anyway. [Alix: eeek].
The thing is, we were planning to fly out to Preveza in the last week of March and have asked the yard to get ‘Missy Bear’ ready for then. But the ceremony in London is on Wed 30th March. A few days delay to departure will be inevitable. We’ll probably stay over in the CA’s lodgings in London docklands for the night, and then fly out from a London airport as soon as we can, clutching our two extra items of hand luggage.
Now March has arrived, we are starting to think more about Missy Bear coming out of the hibernation we induced in her in November. That’s assuming the world hasn’t gone to hell in a large, mushroom-shaped handcart in the meantime.
With a yacht, you can’t just lock it up and leave. Well, you could, but she would not look good and smell nice when you returned four months later. And she might not still be working.
In terms of domestics, we had to make sure there was no perishable food left on board. If it wasn’t in a tin (and we don’t really have tinned food) or stored in a Tupperware, it had to go. That was First Mate’s job
Humidity is also a problem, maybe less so in Greece than in the UK, but no-one wants to return to the interior of a mouldy boat. We have left a ventilation cone open in the main hatch and paid the yard to install and replace – on a monthly basis - some trays of dehumidifying crystals. Some people even run an electric dehumidifier for the duration, but that seemed like overkill. All our bedding and towels, plus the clothes we were leaving on board, were washed, dried and stored in our vacuum bags.
I drained the two water tanks and flushed out the two blackwater holding tanks with a cleaner. For fuel, it is best to leave the fuel tanks full, which we did. A half-empty fuel tank can cause condensation to build up and diesel engines do not like water in their fuel. There is a primary fuel filter that is designed to separate out water before it gets to the injectors, but it’s much better to ensure the fuel is good before it gets to the filters. Twice we have had engines on charter yachts give up on us, and once when I was instructing. We had to sail out of trouble. That can be a challenge and fun, but sometimes it’s better to limit the amount of fun you expect. [Alix: it’s not really my idea of fun, give me a large glass of Vino and a good book].
I closed all the sea-cocks. These are valves to the all the ‘holes’ in the skin or hull, through which sea water is pumped-in (e.g., to cool the engine or flush the heads) or waste greywater let-out. If you don’t close them when you are out on the hard standing, little vermin might fancy sneaking in and spending some cosy time onboard.
On deck, it was very useful to have Tony there to help. He helped me take down the head sail and mainsail, rinse them, dry them, roll/fold and bag them up. That’s really a two-person job. All the rigging sheets and halyards were taken off, soaked in fresh water, hung over the boom to dry and then coiled and stored. Basically, anything that is left out in strong UV light and salt will fade and perish much more quickly.
After Tony flew back to the UK, I was going to take the sprayhood and Bimini down and stow the flexible solar panels. But that looked like a tricky job, so I requested that the yard at Cleopatra Marina do that. I’ll also ask them to reassemble it for me – there’s too many bits to manhandle and that I could fix in wrong place or back to front.
We obviously cleaned the boat thoroughly, both inside and out. You could eat your dinner off the bilges. I even gave the teak decks a good oil! The yard will polish the topsides with a special agent just before relaunch, which will help keep the white gelcoat looking shiny and new.
There are other minor snags and annual maintenance jobs that I have asked the yard to do. They will organise the engine’s 250-hour service and hopefully fix a small oil leak from the gear box. They will regularly check and top up the house and starter batteries. They will clean the barnacles off our retractable bow-thruster. And just before we lower her back into the water, the hull will be sanded lightly and another layer of blue anti-foul applied.
One important job they will do is replace the anodes. There is one on the hull bottom and another at the end of the propeller. There may also be one on the bow-thruster, which I’ve asked them to look out for when they clean it. These zinc anodes are there to prevent ‘galvanic corrosion’. Missy Bear is normally floating in a big bath of electrolyte, called ‘the sea’. She also has big bits of metal protruding into this electrolyte, such as the propeller shaft, the propeller and any metal through-hull fittings. When she is attached to shore power and near other submerged metallic objects, Missy Bear becomes part of a giant battery, just like the smaller ones you might have created in school physics lessons. Electricity will flow from one bit of metal (an anode) to another bit of metal (a cathode) through the conducting sea-water. It is said that there is even a risk or electrocution to swimmers near the yachts. The zinc on the anodes prevents the current jumping from the yacht and any more-distant submerged iron or steel cathodes.
All of which is great news for swimmers. But the zinc anodes are actually sacrificial fixtures to protect the submerged metal parts on Missy Bear!! Without these, the brass propeller would act as an anode and erode as its electrons flowed towards the steel prop shaft (cathode), The zinc basically is a better anode than the brass propeller and so protects the latter. Simples! [Alix: another not-my-idea-of-fun was physics. Well, actually, our first teacher was great, but for O-level we had a researcher who’d had a nervous breakdown, and who decided teaching in a large comprehensive was a better idea?]
You can see from the photograph just how badly our propeller anode has worn. Without it, we would be looking at replacing a very expensive propeller.
Finally, I do really hope that I can remember the way all the rigging was run and secured. I took lots of photos to remind me, but I suspect I will have taken one too few.
I have a slight butterfly in my tummy about the works. The marina and yard are not the best communicators. At first this was due to their systems having been hacked and taken down for several weeks. They are good at invoicing without actually saying what works have or haven’t been. Fingers crossed!
[Alix: Richard has spent too long working in corporate life where you set deadlines, keep to them, and tell people how well you’re doing or you don’t get paid. After a manic year last year of delays, new-boat issues, and a touching greeting with a rock, we are just going to smile, shrug our shoulders and say “mañana.”]
Congratulations- so well deserved. I love reading them too x
A well-deserved award. Congratulations! And this is great - I wanted to know how you put her to bed. The yacht, thank you.