Maintenance interlude

The second half of June was spent ashore.  Ruby on the hard at Rhu; Elsie at home, earning some pennies and Lionel flitting between the two.

There were two ‘must do’ jobs:  reinforce the stern mountings for the wind steering and get the radar working properly.  There were also a host of other jobs which needed to be done at some time and that time might as well be now.  They included minor things like changing lights to LEDs to save power, minor gel coat repairs and servicing winches; routine servicing of safety gear such as liferaft and emergency beacon.  And big stuff – chiefly replacing the standing rigging.  While this might last the lifetime of the boat, there is no easy way of inspecting its condition and discovering that it should have been replaced in the middle of an Atlantic storm would be no fun at all so, as it was ten years old, prudence suggested that it was a good time.

As always with boat maintenance, costs are always more than planned.  The previous owner had used a high-spec anti-fouling paint and it seemed prudent to use similar to avoid incompatibility and peeling.  This turned out to be only obtainable in 20 litre tins and very expensive.  I bit the bullet and went for it.  3 coats used half the tin and the other half will, hopefully, still be in useable condition for the next application. The liferaft was at the end of its useful life (27 years!) so had to be replaced.  And so on.

A little rant.

The costs I could live with. What really *!$$£$ me off is the impossibility of getting service from maintenance organisations. I did my best:  I made arrangements a month in advance; I sent detailed job lists, requesting advice that they could be completed; I even left Ruby alongside for a week, so that jobs could be checked out.  But I still had to spend hours chasing and checking.  The ‘mechanical’ side got completed, with only minor niggles, but the electrical was only half done.  I had the mast removed; I personally removed the radar, so that it could be bench tested, but still it was not fixed.  Indeed, it is worse than before, only working when the engine is running.