Heron is finally sailing

So we made it! Last Sunday, already in the afternoon, Heron finally sailed off from Nautec Mare marina in Monfalcone. Not everything was finished and after four days under way we are already making list of things we forgot to bring along (and also the list of what we should have left at home and mistakenly took with us). But anyway, at some point one must decide that it's enough or one never leaves. 

We tried to take care of everything at our house, say goodbye to all our friends and families, which was again very hard and emotional, and tie all the loose ends. We would like to have more time for everything, to meet more people, but we ran out of time. On one of the rare occasions when I had couple of minutes to take care of plants in my garden, I met this beauty. It is Broad-bodied chaser or Modri plščec (Libellula depressa).

One of the last things we were waiting for was the cooker. Here it is:

It is of Italian make, and it's a bit like Italian cars - looks sleek and fast (has powerful burners), but not of a too high quality - in our case the oven door doesn't open all the way because it is mounted too low and so we have another project that we didn't want. It is also less deep than the old one was, which means that I can cook on two burners in medium size pans and pots just fine, but bigger pots will be a challenge. I haven't tested the oven yet, hope that it will make me very happy.

Sunday evening we made it to Portorož, and after a good night sleep we sailed off. Wind from the South only allowed us to sail almost right towards West, so we figured we would drop the anchor somewhere at the estuary of river Po and continue towards Ancona the next morning. After whole day of very light wind and flat sea wind got stronger in the evening and it brought along some very annoying waves. We were not able to find a good calm spot for the night, so we just sailed on. It was my fist night-sailing after a long time, but strangely enough I didn't have any problems taking the shift from 2.30 in the morning til 6, when we anchored near Rimini. After couple of hours sleep we sailed on.

We have some new sails and we tested them all in all combinations - here we are flying the genoa and solent sail at the same time. Later we tried it with the main also and it worked very well in light winds we were having.

At about 10 in the evening we anchored in bay Portonovo couple of miles South of Ancona. It was already too dark for photos, but I managed to make one of sunset a bit earlier.

 Next morning the wind picked up and captain was eager to sail off. Our destination were the islands of Tremiti some 130 miles away. That would of course mean another night at sea, but the weather looked calm and we thought it wasn't going to be a problem.

Day was calm, we were flying all the sails - genoa, solent ands main and were making good speed over a very calm sea. The sunset was again very pretty.

This time I had the first watch and everything was calm until I noticed the lightnings in the big cloud that was coming towards us from the mainland. At first the lightnings remained in the cloud, but later it started bolting into the sea. I got a bit nervous, especially when the whole thing came closer and closer. At midnight Captain got up and came to see how I was doing and I was relieved that he took over the next shift. I tried to get some sleep, but it was hard since the wind got stronger and the waves bigger. Captain let me sleep till 7 in the morning and I just got up to see the last couple of 3 meter waves. I don't think I ever seen waves this high in Adriatic before. Captain told me that he had winds up to 30 knots and even some rain in the night.This is the first view of Tremiti islands we glimpsed. You can see how choppy the sea was even between the islands.

We found a bit calmer bay with sand bottom for anchoring and had breakfast and went for a swim. Then the big tourist boats started coming and we decided to sail on towards mainland.

I still made some photos of the fortress on the hill at the island of San Nicola.

Mainland greeted us with the rain, clouds and lightnings again, but it was moving towards South fast. The town of Vieste looks very white against the dark sky.

Moving forward

Just a short update on things from my last post:

Outboard carburettor was replaced and all the work done and captain picked it up already on Monday.

On Tuesday the fridge expert came on board, measured the pressure, temperature and figured out the culprit has to be the expansion valve, that either got stuck or some small piece of something blocked it, so it didn't let the gas through. After some fiddling with it it started working again and the fridge is now working like it should. Hope the valve won't give us any more headache in the future, but now at least we know how to deal with it. The best thing of course was that we didn't have to disassemble the galley or do any welding anywhere inside or around the fridge.

The newly ordered cooker is on the way, this nigh it arrived to Munich from Bremen, it is just a matter of days when it will be here. And we got the money from the cancelled order back.

So although the week is not completely over yet, it is looking much better than the last. What greatly contributes to this were two great evenings we spent with our friends, and the next couple of days that we will spend with our families. And as the projects are slowly finishing, the D day is coming closer. As it looks now, we might sail off on next Sunday. I'm already in the state of mild panic, next week will not be easy.

The worst week ever

This week has been a real disaster. It felt like for every step forward we made three, not just two, steps back. It started on Monday, when captain brought our Mercury outboard (the motor that we use on our dinghy) to be serviced, which we thought would be an hour job with not too high costs. But sometime last season the salt water must have come into carburettor, probably with fuel, and during the winter it corroded the carburettor so much that it couldn't be saved even by hours of cleaning, so we are now waiting for a spare one to replace the damaged one. And the costs will probably be couple of times more than we originally thought.

On Tuesday captain's tooth chipped off. Not a catastrophe really, but this spring we were visiting our dentist very frequently to make sure all our teeth are fixed and we wouldn't have to search for a dentist in some unfamiliar country. So he had to make another appointment, luckily it was already next day. Hope that this was the last one, but it still delayed us for half a day.

And here is a sad story about my new cooker for the boat, that begun already in March, but culminated last week. You might have notice that on every photo of Heron's galley there is a hole where the cooker should be (well, hole with some random things we didn't know where else to put).

My old cooker was already 14 years old and it survived 6 seasons of charter before we got it with the boat in 2010. Not to mention that it was also heavily used while we had it. The burners started to corrode and were chipping off, the electric ignition didn't work, the grill was corroding as well, the knobs were pretty worn down, so we wished to repair some things and make it better and prettier. We contacted the cooker manufacturer, which is Eno from France and they let us know that they do not produce spare parts for our model any more. So I decided I shall have a new one, after all cooker is one of the most heavily used pieces of equipment on our boat. I studied different models and types and it was really hard, because it is difficult to find any reliable information. All the manufacturers state that their product is the best, so that doesn't help much. And among the sailors the cookers are not the most talked about topics in forums, there are very few that have tried or owned different models of cookers so they could compare them, or they are so in love with their own boat including the cooker, even when they are ancient, that there is no room for any objective opinion. After a lot of comparing I figured I want an all stainless steel one, with good oven with thermostat, three burners and of course it have to approximately fit into its space and gimbals. And I thought - why not have another Eno Bretagne again, it would fit exactly, and the newer model is better, more modern and prettier than the old one was. So I wanted to order one, but it turned out that cookers are heavy, they have glass door, so they are difficult to transport, so even many on-line shops that are selling such a cooker wouldn't ship to Slovenija. Needles to say, I was not able to buy it locally, it is way too exotic for a small Slovenian market. After a bit of frustration with ordering, captain decided we would buy the cooker in German Segelladen and organise the transport ourselves. That was in second half of March. Initial information that we got was that the cooker would be available in 7-10 days. After couple of weeks we contacted them and asked if the cooker was ready. The answer was that they are very sorry, but the cooker is going to be shipped to them in third week of May. By that time we already knew our departure was not going to be before end of May, so we didn't panic too much. On fourth week of May we contacted them again, they said sorry, there is some more delay, the cooker will be available in the beginning of June. We contacted them again last week, and they said, it will be any day now. Then we got a mail this past Wednesday, that the cooker got lost during transport, but we could choose another model from their shop or order another Eno Bretagne, which will take another 6-8 weeks. And they are sorry, but it isn't their fault, because it got lost between the manufacturer and central German distribution center. Ok, maybe it wasn't them who lost the thing (that by the way weighs 34 kilos and is transported on a pallet), but to have such a bad control over ordered items is shocking. After initial shock we realised we needed to act quick or we will have to put our old sad cooker back into the galley. We checked what is available fast and meets most of my criteria, so on Friday we ordered Techimpex Deluxe with 3 burners from SVB (another German company, hopefully better organised and run), they have it on stock and they do ship to Slovenija, and now we are hoping it will arrive soon. And that Segelladen will return our money soon, as well. I know, we were way too patient about it, but with another 1376 project we had to do, this one wasn't always in our focus.

The thing that weighs on us the heaviest is our fridge - it just stopped working. I think I might have jinxed it by writing so cocky about how great it works and boasting how well we made it in my last post. The water pump, that was giving us the hard time, was replaced some time ago and is working well, the compressor is also still working, it just stops after couple of seconds with error: high pressure. We're hoping it could just be the pressure of gas inside the system that is too high and it worked before when the temperatures were lower, but not in the heath that we're having now. If it means any blockage or leakage, we will need to take apart half of the galley and we're dreading it already. Another thing is that it is not easy to get a fridge expert to diagnose the problem fast, hopefully we'll get some help next week. We can't leave without a fridge.

We do have a backup system, that is air-cooled and is working well...

... the oval shaped thing up left in the photo is its cooling element, but it is not so powerful as the water cooled one (that is cooling the stainless steel plates to the left and right of the lower part) and while it keeps the beer cool, it can't be really used as a freezer.

And now we could really use a very good week for a change!

Some more galley news

We're still at home, or rather in Monfalcone on our boat most of the time. We haven't sail away yet, it's going to be another couple of weeks probably. While we're working really hard, without a break, it just seems that many projects take more time than planned, parts that we ordered are still on the way, and then every now and then an unforeseen problem appears from nowhere and messes up our schedule completely. 

But let's get to the good news - our fridge/freezer is almost finished and it looks great! This is the fridge part...

.... with shelves on both sides...

... and this is the other half....

... with the freezer part under the shelf. We made all the shelves out of the material from our old fridges.

We made sure the fridges are very well insulated, this is how thick the lid insulation is.

Since we had a true hot summer weather now from beginning of June, we put the fridge to it's use immediately.

What's still missing are the hinges for the lids, and the thermostat for regulating the temperatures inside the fridge. At the moment we are simply lifting the lid out completely and putting it on the side, which makes opening of both lids simultaneously a bit difficult. And we have a thermometer inside the fridge and we manually switch the fridge on and off. In spite of the current heath we need to run the fridge only an hour and a half in the morning every day (the fridge is water cooled and has two huge cooling plates that keep it cold and the freezer below 0 deg C even when it's not running), so obviously the thick insulation is doing it's job.

Captain managed to finish another difficult project - repairing of our Spectra watermaker. He changed all the seals and gaskets and replaced the membrane. He took the whole thing apart and then he put all this back together...

... into this. We then together mounted it back under the floorboards. Needless to say, it was a humongous task, and a big and valuable learning experience as well.

Heron is staring to look more like itself rather than the workshop or the toolshed...

... but there's still a lot to be done.

News from Heron's galley

We've been working really hard on our boat these past couple of months and several projects have been finished. Our galley is not completely done yet, but is getting the look that we planned. Unfortunately there's still a lot of things to do and the date of our departure is not yet determined. But maybe the cold and wet May that we had was really a blessing in disguise because it wasn't so difficult to work all days instead of already sailing somewhere in Italy.

Nevertheless, birds started to mate and make nests and on a motorboat couple of boats down on our pier an Eurasian coot (črna liska) made a nest on their swimming platform and even laid and egg in it. We saw her once and she got quite upset with us passing by, probably also by others, and after that encounter we didn't see her again. Poor little thing abandoned the nest. The egg was still there for couple of days, and then it was gone, maybe some animal took it. I'm sorry it ended like that, but the spot she chose for her nest was really bad. Hope her next try was more successful. 

Beside the fridge, the renovation of the countertop was the most difficult and time consuming project in our galley. The old one was not very pretty, but we would gladly keep it if it wasn't cracked on several spots, and when the water got into cracks it started to swell up and cracks got bigger. At first we thought we might want to remove the complete countertop and put in the new one. The old one is made of two pieces, both huge, and is thoroughly glued and screwed in place and it looks like it could be a structural element. Surely it was put in place before the deck was put onto the boat. We figured out that we could't get such huge pieces of material into the boat, and even if we did, we would never be able to built it in and make it so sturdy and strong as the old one is. So we made another plan - we would keep the old countertop, after all there was nothing wrong with it, and try to remove the top layer and replace it with something new. Luckily the old top layer didn't resist too much. After removing it it was time to make the surface even and free of all the glue residues.

After the surface was prepared...

... we tried the fit of the new top layer. It is a 3 mm thick laminate like composite material, and should be very durable. It was a big struggle to get it to fit, since in the boat almost nothing is parallel or perpendicular, so it was difficult to get the right shape and measure the sizes. A friend that we will eternally be grateful took our drawing and the measurements and put it all in the computer programme and printed it out in actual size on a huge plotter, so we brought this blueprint back to the boat and were able to check how it fits. After a few corrections we were ready to go live - actual material was cut with water jet to the shape. Of course it didn't fit absolutely perfect, so we still needed to do some sawing and sanding. You just can't get it perfect without several iterations of sanding, checking the fit, sanding, etc.

And once we were happy with the fit, we glued it to the countertop. We actually used epoxy resin, thickened a bit with some synthetic fibres. Epoxy has a nice habit of spreading itself well over the surface almost by itself, filling possible cracks, and gives you couple of minutes to move the upper part a bit if it is needed. But then of course you have to weigh it down and wait a bit till it hardens. We used all that was at hand as weights, from hammers to electric tools to chains in bucket to cans of paints, winch, pack of newspaper...

This is how the part where the fridge is looked (the fridge lids were not yet finished by this time)...

... and this is the part with sink and the new faucet. The empty space to the left is where the new cooker is supposed to go. The white thing behind the sink is the place where the wet dishes are placed to dry. That thing gave us a lot of headache as well, it was really worn down, and it didn't bother us so much before, but now it really didn't look well among all the other new and shiny things. So we painted it and sanded it and polished it, until we had enough. It is definitely much prettier than before, with more time it could be even better, but at some point you have to stop and start the next project.

One of the most recent things we did is glue together the lids for the fridge. We worked from below - we created a support inside the fridge onto which we put insulation part and on top the countertop with the new surface. This way we were sure everything fitted. And then it needed to be pressed together and to harden.

And this one is already done, and fits the fridge opening perfectly.

About boat projects

I guess this post should be the first one this year. And of course it should be posted way before now. It is probably too late to wish you all a happy New Year and happy Easter, but I can thank any one of you who are still reading this and haven't given up on us.

It is not that we haven't have enough topics to write about, but these couple of months just flew by so fast and our lives are so hectic, that we either don't have time or the energy to write. The thing is that we decided to sail off on another longer sailing adventure this year. We optimistically took on plenty of boat projects, some of them because they needed to be done - like repairing the watermaker, replacing all the through hulls, replacing the cooker, repairing the counter top in galley, replacing some of the sails and lines, and some of them because we wished to - like having an electric winch, and new anchor, and more powerful solar panels, new mattresses, a proper washing machine, new shroud with the furler for a new jib and the biggest project - building a new fridge with freezer. 

Captain's plan was to finish everything and sail off at the end of April. My plan was more like May, April weather can be cold and wet. As it looks now we'll be really happy if we finish most project by end of May. Some smaller things will have to be done under way.

Captain figured out new tracks are also needed for new jib. 

The holes drilled into deck needed to be filled with epoxy to seal off the soft core before the screws can be placed. We are quite inventive in creating the tools - sometimes a plastic bag and a little bit of duct tape and a nozzle of a standard sika tube can be adequate tool to do the job.

The installation of tracks of course didn't go without hitches - while drilling the holes through the deck we managed to drill through two 220V electric cables we didn't know were there. Would not happen if they were indicated in boat's electric diagram. But as we noticed a lot of things do not comply with the boat's documentation. It took us two days to repair the cables. We also did some mess on deck with epoxy resin and Bison glue that we will need to clean, or at least try to clean.

Working on a boat is always a struggle to free the space were you're working and put away things that are in the way. We put stuff into any place that is not full yet, including a bathroom, that can then look like this ...

... or all over the galley ....

Once some work is put into it, a bathroom can quickly go from this ...

... to this...

... and then, when the space is needed elsewhere, unfortunately, to this again.

But in the other bathroom the washing machine is already in the place. We plan to test run it before we depart. The washing machine can not use its internal heather, that would be too much load for our inverter, but we can switch the internal heather off with the button and feed the machine with the hot water from the water heather or even with the hot water we would warm up on the cooker. At least that's the plan.

One of the bigger projects was putting the new antifouling on the boat, since we decided to put a copper coat on. This requires stripping off all of previous anti-fouling paints...

... putting on several coats of primers, like this silver one on the keel...

... and bronze ones, all together four of them.

Then the copper coat can be painted over - four to five coats.

We had great luck with the weather, everything was drying perfectly. After a couple of days we arranged with the marina to get the Heron to the lift to shift her in her stands for half a meter, so we could do the whole procedure on spots that were not accessible before.

Another huge project is the fridge with freezer. Originally there were two fridges on our boat, both water cooled. The one that was colder opened from the top like some freezers and other, less cold, opened from the side like most fridges. Their insulation was not the best and the side-door was not very practical, especially when we were sailing and the boat was heeling, many times stuff just jumped out of the fridge when we opened the door - I still remember how we cleaned the chilly sauce from underneath the floorboards while on the Atlantic passage. And we really wished to have a proper freezer, it would make the life so much easier. All these reasons led us to decision to remove the old fridges and build new ones. It was not an easy decision, we knew it was going to be a huge undertaking and a completely new terrain for us.

We had to cut the old fridges out of the boat, piece by piece, we didn't want to disturb the countertop and the front wall. We cut a new opening into the countertop for the new door and started to build the fridges from outside in - we surrounded the whole space with a thick layer of insulating foam and tried to mould the shape to the shape of the boat and maximize the volume. We then glued the plastic sheets over it - here the interior is still one big space ...

... sealed the edges with a pliable plastic tape...

... put a division wall between two parts and installed the cooling elements. Then the certified fridge specialist connected the tubes and put the gas into the cooling elements. We were so happy when we tested it and it worked well. If you look closely you can see the slight frost still on the cooling plate on the right.

We still need to do the doors to close the fridges, build some internal shelfs and install the thermostats. And of course thoroughly test run it. So more photos will follow...

Heron is in the water!

Finally! Yesterday Heron was splashed, here she is in her berth in Nautec marina in Monfalcone.

Looks peaceful, doesn't she? The process of getting her into the water was anything but. We were due to splash already on Friday, but when we came to marina on Thursday, we discovered a small rusty spot on the keel that would need to be treated. It needed the complete procedure - grinding, epoxy primer, filler, primer again and then couple of coats of coppercoat. Even with placing the heather under the keel to speed up the drying of all the phases, we figured it would be nice to have a bit more time than 24 hours. Luckily marina's big travel lift did have some free slots on Saturday and they could move us from Friday to Saturday. On Saturday we had a bit of a delay partly due to the strong downpour around noon, so we were hoisted in lift slings at around four as the last boat for the day. 

We were both a bit nervous, Captain replaced all the through hulls (skoznike) this winter, so we were a bit worried that there might be a leak somewhere. When Heron was lowered into the water, Captain quickly checked all the through hulls. None of them was leaking. Well done Captain! 

But there was a leakage from Volvo dripless shaft seal! After a couple of minutes we realised there was too much water coming into the boat and that our only option was to lift the boat out of the water again and replace the seal. But where could we get a replacement on Saturday afternoon? It looked like we would need to wait until Monday before we could do anything about it. We arranged with the marina for Heron to stay in slings on the lift, and then to see on Monday morning if we were able to fix the problem by then and they can put us in the water, or we need to go back on hard onto the stands for another couple of days.

As we were standing next to Heron, scratching our heads and trying to figure out what to do, couple of people that were working on other boats and boat owners came by, offering their advice and sympathy. But nobody knew where we could get the darn Volvo dripless shaft seal before Monday! That is, until we spoke to Vinko Golobič, also a Yanmar mechanic for company ANS, who not only knew exactly what we need to do, but also that the nautical shop Tramontana in Črnuče might have such seals on stock and that we might get it on that same evening. He made some calls and we jumped into our car, drove to Ljubljana and shortly after 8 in the evening we were in possession of a brand new original Volvo seal of the right dimensions for our shaft! We were amazed by so much help and kindness from fellow sailors. A big weight fell off our shoulders, but not all of it - we still needed to install it.

Next morning we drove back to the boat and started to dismantle the shaft and the old seal. The old seal was not a Volvo original, but we were told it was of the same quality. It was installed three years ago by a boatyard crew when Heron was getting new antifouling. When we took it off we noticed that the inner rubber lips were almost non-existent. Could be due to lesser quality of the material, but also because the intake hose, that takes care of lubricating the seal with sea water was heavily clogged. Captain replaced the hose and through hull for it already a while ago.

It took us couple of hours to replace the seal. We also polished the shaft. We were working so hard that there was very little time to take photos. Here is one with shaft pulled outwards...

... and on this one you can already see it all put together again - the new seal is the black thing on the upper side of photo. Also the shaft is in place, all shiny, the zinc as well, and above the Volvo seal there is a hose that is lubricating it.

It was already evening when we were done. Our mood was still not the best, it was much like the weather - grey and depressed.

Next morning we were up before 7, both too nervous to keep on sleeping. Before splashing we sanded the coppercoat some more to make sure it is activated properly. And couple of minutes after 9 there it was - the big moment. Heron was lowered into the water again and HURRAY! No leaking! We were so happy. We motored the boat into her berth and secured it. And then it was time for breakfast.

I have always had a great respect of my Captain's technical abilities and his relentless optimism and willpower to tackle any problem on the boat, but I was specially impressed with his mastering the Volvo seal replacement. It must have been one of his masterpieces.

We're back home today, returning to Heron tomorrow. There's so much more work to be done. And so many more project and problems to write about...