9th March
This has been a crazy, wonderful week! So much has happened I am not sure where to begin. Cyclone Irina made landfall just north of us bringing torrential rain and huge winds…I was relatively calm throughout the storm and managed to sleep without panic, I am obviously getting better at this. 3 days of rain and wind made life on board a little boring…there is not much you can really do in that sort of weather.
During this terrible weather we spotted a huge amount of water inside the boat, in the kitchen cupboards and under the saloon seating. We traced the problem and found a rather serious bit of wood rot just behind the mast step. We have cut it out and left it open to dry out at the moment…we got an expert opinion from Dylan and have decided we will effect this repair on the water. Yip on the water!
So we cleared out under the boat, packed up the last of our workshop and had them place the trailer under us and lift her into the air…we are flying 2 hulls at the moment…so we could complete the work under the keels.
Yesterday we managed to epoxy that as well as sand, we are prepped for antifouling. Today we do the last bits of the antifoul, under the keels, on the props and saildrives and inside the underwater skin fittings. We will be back in the water after major repair and construction tonight! Yip, finally back on the water and getting closer to the goal of sailing. Not that the work is complete, we have a list of things that need to be done before we cast off but we are definitely heading in the right direction.
I simply can’t wait to lulled to sleep on the never still water on a floating Yrumoar…
Things never seem to work out as planned…our precious Yrumoar was injured on her passage across the land towards the water and we had to effect repairs to her starboard rudder before we could actually launch her on Saturday. We spend Friday night sleeping on a friend’s boat because she was standing in the slipway with a wet epoxied rudder at a 45 degree slope making it impossible to lie down on the beds.
Anyway by Saturday afternoon we had completed the repair and launched her into the water, we would finally sleep on our own boat in the water!
Both Barry and I have not been feeling too well and decided that once in the water we would go and see a doctor. As we only launched on Saturday we waited for Monday, doing little in the way of work. On Monday morning we hailed a taxi and headed to town to visit a doctor as well as an upholsterer.
The doctor prescribed an antibiotic for me and some steroids and REST for Barry and gave us a large list of medicines that need prescription for Yrumoar, our medicine chest is complete with general purpose antibiotics and all!
We dropped off the helm chair we had manufactured while still on land, chose the material to cover it and left it with them. Did a few grocery items and headed back to the boat.
On Tuesday we collected the trampolines we purchased from the yacht club…they do not fit Yrumoar but as they are not sewn we can cut the battons shorter and adjust them size and we will have fantastic trampolines! Wednesday saw us doing one of the two.
Ryun’s yacht Seashoes was launched early Wednesday morning and we joined them aboard for some champagne. Then headed off to make our trampolines but only managed to finish one before return to Seashoes for evening cocktails.
Yesterday saw Barry actually taking the doctor’s advice and resting. He will be doing that again today as his arms seem to be showing signs of improvement. We will probably start working again either on the weekend or Monday…then it is full steam ahead as we have just over 2 weeks to get Yrumoar ready for the Inhaca race, our official sea trial and the largest racing event from this yacht club. We will be at sea for both Barry’s and Kyle’s birthdays…and the greatest thing about entering the race is that we receive jackets with our yacht name embroidered on the front!
