Seminole Boatyard was responsible for hauling us out, pressure washing/scraping the bottom, and giving Kosmos a space to be worked on with power and water. For the actual work, we’d hired a company called Yacht Tech, who specializes in Nordhavns. Yesterday, when we’d said that Eric had met with “the staff,” we’d meant Yacht Tech.

The primary purpose for hauling out was to get new bottom paint. Usually, they’ll do spot sanding where needed and, wherever the paint is fine, will simply put another coat over the existing coats. But it was time to sand off all of the old paint and start fresh. The sanding took a couple of days. They waited to paint the bottom until the rest of the work on the hull had been completed, so the paint didn’t get done until the second week.

It was also time to balance the propellor. The propellor was removed and taken to a machine shop for balancing. One of the blades was off balance and had to be adjusted. It took four days before the propellor was put back on.

We’d requested that Kosmos’s hull be compounded (old wax removed) and waxed. In yesterday’s post, we’d failed to mention that as soon as she was situated in her spot, they’d started working on the compounding/waxing along the waterline. We decided to go with compounding this time because, being out of the water, they had leverage that they simply cannot get when the boat is in the water (and normally the boat is in the water during waxing).

We’d also requested gelcoat repair to be done in several spots. While the boat was out of the water, the workers came and prepped all the spots to be fixed and completed the repairs on the hull. While most of the gelcoat work could be done in the water, the spots near the waterline could only be done while she was on the hard.

The boot stripe had some damaged spots and a few spots where the paint was wearing away, so a painter came and touched up the areas that needed it. This was another thing that could only be done with Kosmos out of the water.

While she was in the yard, they also got started on work that could have been done while the boat was in the water. In yesterday’s post, we forgot to mention that the very first bit of work that was done inside was the rubber seal around the lazarette was replaced (this was completed even before Eric started clearing the laz in preparation for the fuel hoses being replaced). Rubber deteriorates, and after 19 years, several of the seals were beginning to die. We’d actually requested that the majority of our seals be replaced, but they only had enough material on hand to do the lazarette and three portholes.

The port side fuel hose was a giant headache to remove/replace. Since it wasn’t easy access, they had to pull the entire fuel cap assembly out, which took a lot of hammering and prying. Then it was tricky to get the old hose out, and even tricker to get the new one in. It actually took two people to get the new one in.

The starboard side wasn’t exactly easy, either, but it was much easier than the port side.

Here was the port side hose that had been removed. In the back ground was the sanded down rudder, awaiting paint.

One of the reasons we picked Yacht Tech is because they kept Nordhavn specialty parts in stock. We’ve found that there are certain parts that can be difficult to acquire. One time, we had a porthole latch break. We couldn’t find the replacement part anywhere except from the manufacturer in Taiwan. If we recall correctly, the part itself was $4 and we ordered 10 so that we had plenty of spares, so the total purchase price was $40. They would only take cash. We had to pay $80 in wiring fees (the manufacturer insisted we pay their bank fee + ours) and shipping was as much as the parts. Our bank considered it to be a shady transaction and hassled us, wanting proof that this was a legitimate business and not a fraud scam.

Anyways, one of the things we love about Kosmos is that every door and latch locks. Below, you can see the middle drawer is unlocked and the upper and lower drawers are locked.

The lighter on our stove had mysteriously stopped working in 2021. We’ve been using a lighter ever since. Since the stove works fine with the lighter, we didn’t feel like it was worth the money to remove it from its wall mount and tear it apart in hopes of fixing it. We were expecting that Yacht Tech had seen this problem before and would know how to fix it — hopefully without tearing it out of the wall. Much to our disappointment, they’d never seen this problem before. But much to our joy, they quickly located and solved the problem: The lighting mechanism was plugged into a AA battery. We simply needed to replace the battery. We cannot believe that single AA battery lasted for 15-years!

They tried to find closet squeak, but they didn’t see anything obvious, either. They think it may be the cedar lining. They tightened some screws on the lining and suggested that Eric add some more screws to secure it better.

And, of course, the biggest and most biggest project of all was the alternator regulator. That gets its own post...

Here was Kosmos as they were getting ready to put her back in the water, looking shiny and almost brand new.