Retirement…a time to sit back and put my feet up? Not when you have a boat! The job list does not get any shorter and every job takes three times longer than you plan it to…and leads to more jobs!!
What retirement does mean though is that we can have longer weekends at the boat. We no longer have to wait until I get home on a Friday evening or be back on a Sunday to get ready for the week ahead. It buys us a few extra hours and every minute is utilised fully.
New Jobs...
Martin has continued to install the new electrics and navigation systems. This means running numerous cables under the floor, up the walls and across the roof.
Being a boat, this is not as easy as it sounds as it means moving everything around to access places and usually dismantling several other structures in order to get to the one thing you want to remove.
Installing new navigation equipment included new instrument gauges and chart plotters. This meant a new pod on the pedestal and new instrument panels above the companion way and chart table. All required careful planning and measuring to ensure everything fit in and of course looked smart!
On a different track (excuse the pun) was the re-fitting of the mainsheet track. This had been removed when we first bought Escapade. We needed new end stops which, of course, were obsolete, leading to a complete new track, end stops and car. On removing the track, we noticed the gel coat was cracked. This led to Fox’s boatyard repairing it for us. However, the easiest way to do this was to completely fill the fixing holes. Leading to a job for us…re-drilling them. A scary thought, drilling holes in our boat, especially as we didn’t want to re-crack the gel coat. With much deliberation and careful drilling of pilot holes, countersinking and then drilling, all were perfect. Unfortunately the new track was slightly shorter than the old one which left 5mm of the end holes showing! Next job, learn how to fill and gel coat!! All good in the end though, and no leaks!!
