We had a busy couple of days while Kosmos was still out of the water. We got to play with zinc, propane, flax, lanolin, and Swiss cheese.

Yesterday, Eric was up very early so he could change out all the sacrificial zincs (except the one he did in Moorea) before the painting began. The replaceable zincs pieces are attached to various metal spots on the boat and they corrode instead of the other exposed metal. It is much easier to do it now with the boat out of the water. But the one on the main propeller turned out to be a big challenge. Eric pounded and pounded at it and it still wouldn’t come off. Finally a neighbor in the yard came by with a blow torch. Heating up the metal caused it to expand and they were finally able to get the zinc off. Putting it back on was easy. We had been warned by other Nordhavn 43 owners about the propeller zinc being difficult. Eric thinks it would have been nearly impossible to have changed it in the water.

We needed to spend the day doing the usual getting ready to go, because there was a good chance the boat would be done and we would leave town. So we dropped off Damien and Jacq and the kids in town so they could do tourist stuff. We went to customs at the airport and picked up our cruising permit, went to seven different places before finally finding a place to get a propane tank filled, did a big grocery store stock up, and did a stock up at the boat store. Christi got a haircut. Most of our errands took us to the industrial area of town. We didn’t realize just how big the industrial area is. It seems to go on forever. There were small bursts of rain periodically through the day, which made us nervous about the progress of the painting. Upon arrival back at Kosmos, we found out they were only able to get one coat of paint done, not both. This meant we would be put back in the water and leave one day later. Sigh.

Today, Christi spent time with our friends. The boat yard is at the end of a road paralleling the water. Directly next to it is a small dock for fishing boats, and beyond that is just grass fields. Christi, Jacq, Damien and the boys walked around the dock and looked at the fishing boats, then went over to the field, where the boys ran around. From there, they headed into town and walked around for a couple of hours.

Eric stayed back at Kosmos to work on changing the stuffing in the stuffing box. The stuffing box is a tube shaped housing that goes around the drive shaft. A little bit of ocean water leaks into the tube to keep the shaft cool. The stuffing material is flax saturated with a wax. It is made into a rope and you literally stuff it around the shaft. Eric had been reluctant to work on it because removing the flax stuffing means turning a slow leak into a fast one. But now it was out of the water and less stressful take apart the stuffing box. The stuffing box had been running a bit warmer than usual, up from 100 degrees F to about 107. It was time to change it. He carefully followed the instructions and wrestled with the tightly fitting stuffing box. First trying to get it apart and then putting it all back together. Three hours later he was fairly confident all was good.

The boat yard finished the second coat of paint and we are ready to go back in the water tomorrow (Friday) morning. It looks great! The photo below is multi-purpose. You can see the freshly painted bottom in the foreground. In the background on the left you can see what part of the boat yard looks like, with boats lined up and with the picturesque river behind the yard. To the right is the parking lot for the fishing dock. Unfortunately, you can’t see where the field begins just beyond that parking lot.

At 1400 Christi and the crew went back to the boat so they could get ready to go. Their friend, Chris, was coming to pick them up this evening. They were going to stay with Chris a few more days before heading back home to Victoria, another state in Australia. We were sad to say goodbye, but everyone was relieved to get the boys off the boat. Being that it is small and not childproof, the adults were always on edge about what the boys might get into and the boys were always frustrated because they weren’t allowed to do anything. Also, while in dry dock, we were using the marina facilities instead of our own toilets and showers, and we know it was hard on Jacq and Damien to put the shoes on the kids and schlep them up and down the stairs to use the bathroom. Not a good thing when you are toilet training.

Once they were gone, Christi donned rubber gloves and greased up the propellers with lanolin grease, which is supposed to help prevent marine growth. Hopefully, the bottom cleaning will once again be an infrequent and easy job.

We went to dinner at a Swiss restaurant in town and got cheese fondue, which is a fun food to eat. Eric decided Swiss cheese is much easier to stuff into your mouth than flax into a tube.