Small tasks on board

5th February


We arrived at the boat on Thursday evening to a freezer full of off meat and maggots. Yes, maggots! Someone decided they needed our plug point more than us and promptly unplugged it and left us with no power for a prolonged period of time. Barry was irritated to say the least and I had the unappealing task of cleaning this mess.

On Friday morning we woke up early and managed to tick a few projects off our list, adding the hook just outside the sliding door to hook yourself on in heavy weather, cutting the wooden plank which is to be our new bookshelf once erected tomorrow (I have been painting it with wood sealant for 2 days now), and once again sorting out the toilet that won’t flush (this time it is the boy’s one).

This morning again we were up early completing more task, moving the chartplotter to outside, sealing the sink and painting the bookcase and boards for our “washing baskets”(yes we have 2 of them). Barry is currently busy checking and replacing light bulbs around the boat. He tried 8 different bulbs to no avail then suddenly it dawned on him, he particular light in question works on a different switch – haha – it was working perfectly all along!

If you look at the few things we managed to complete you would think we hardly did any work, but you are mistaken! It seems as if every project on the boat takes 10 times as long as expected and at 1 point this week we actually looked at each other and at the same time said “Camper?” then burst out laughing. But we quickly dismissed the idea and continued with the small projects. Couple this work with home schooling and normal cooking and cleaning and you have as full schedule day after day.

We are hoping the rigger can come out next week as he did not sound too enthused when we spoke to him, if he can’t make it we will phone a few others and ensure at least 1 of them sees us before Friday. At least then we can make progress on the sail issues as it is really starting to drive us crazy that nothing happens fast enough – even the small changes everyday don’t seem to make that much difference.

Tomorrow we plan to empty our “treasure chest” and bring down all the things that are supposed to be on the boat as well as make a complete inventory of everything in there. We can then decide what we want to sell, what we can dispose of and what we will need for our trip. We decided we would bring everything that should be on the boat onboard as we need to find homes for it all and perhaps make special attachments, some shelving and a couple of cupboard doors to have “a place for everything and everything in its place”.