We spent three days on board Take It Easy doing boat jobs last weekend. Boat maintenance is never a whole lot of fun, but it was particularly trying this time! So let us tell you about our weekend trials and tribulations. Grab a cuppa, it’s a long post! 

Water fights

Have we ever told you we like the water on the outside, not the inside?

When we got on board, having been told all was finished in the galley, we happily turned the tap on for a cuppa, only to find that although it all looked really good, the sink had not been sealed properly to the bench top and we had water trickling down into the cupboard below! Our shipwright fixed things up the next morning. We now have a working galley and dry cupboard. My gentle words “we are a bit pissed” may have helped get some quick action!

But that was not our only water trickle incident. During the first night we noticed the water pump was turning itself on for a few seconds every hour. “There must be a leak somewhere” we thought. We eventually discovered the instantaneous hot water service had given up the ghost and had flooded the shelves in the cupboard below it! More mopping and fiddling with pipes and taps followed – to no avail.

But wait, there is more!  A while back we noticed a drip from the ceiling where the sail track is affixed to the cabin top.  It disappeared for ages, but we kept an eye on it. And unfortunately with all the rain we have had the drip is back! So guess what we needed to do: pull out the corner of the roof lining to check the line of bolts and reset the lot. Unfortunately we have since found that water accumulated between the cabin top and the internal ceiling, soaking the timber, so it is not just a matter of changing a few washers! More about this saga in a later post but suffice to say that Wade has returned to the boat to work on it during the week.

As if this was not enough, we wanted to pressure wash the decks to clean up the bird poop and get rid of the loose flecks of grey paint. Do you think we could start the generator to plug the thing in?  Nope – another repair job!

By Friday night it was doom and gloom and we were quite depressed. Finally in the evening Kim the gas fitter came on board to look at the hot water service. We were ready for the worst, but he announced: “Yes, that’s repairable, I’ll come back next week”. Sweetest words we heard all day! And on the bright side it is better to discover these things while we are tied to the jetty than having to deal with them in the middle of Bass Strait!

Things improve

After the rough start, the rest of the weekend got better. There were quite a few positives:

• The new Spectra halyard for the mainsail went up smoothly.
• 1m50 of 16 mm chain was attached to the anchor to increase our chances of staying put… not that we drag anchor often, but given where we are going this season, we’d rather be safe than sorry.
• We ordered our new instruments: Raymarine multi-purpose 12 inch screen with  depth sounder and Navionics charts. Our existing autopilot, wind instrument and AIS will plug into this, allowing us to check all systems on the one screen.
• New speakers installed in the cockpit to replace the tatty old ones.
• The new spinnaker is on board, as is my pathetic birthday present: a second Fortress Anchor (men and their gifts)!
• Of course the galley and floating floors are wonderful and the whole boat was tidied up inside (only to be messed up this week).
• And we caught up with old friends Tom and Lou we had not seen for too long, and we met new website followers Natalie and Brad, who sail on a Privilege catamaran.

But the best thing for the weekend was crossing the Gippsland Lakes from Metung to Waddy Point on Saturday afternoon, then back to our jetty on Sunday, flying our brand new spinnaker Big O.  Old ragged out Big Red is officially retired, replaced by a big orange and crispy new kite. That deserved recording a video for the very first time.  So click on the image of Big O to view the video on YouTube (another first for us)!