Today was a busy day! As you may recall, we have an obnoxious squeak on the port (left) stabilizer and a leak that has gone from slight to more serious on the starboard (right) side. The necessary parts arrived this morning, and by 1000 the repair guys were working away. They started on the starboard side. The leak was coming from Continue reading
We have been agonizing over a pasarelle. A passarelle is basically a walkway that connects your boat to the sea wall when you are Mediterranean moored. Mediterranean moor means that you back into a spot in between two boats and tie the back of your boat to a sea wall. The boat is not usually close enough to the back wall to easily get on and off the boat, which is where the passarelle comes in. Many people skip installing a passarelle and simply use a wooden board. We tried the wooden board in Greece, but it slid around and it felt unstable. In Greece and at DMarin, we would yank on the ropes to bring the boat close enough to the wall that we could jump to and from shore. Both the wooden plank and the jumping were a little scary.
So why would installing one be an agonizing decision? First of all, Continue reading
Our first task of the day was to wash out the chain locker. We cleaned out all the salt and dirt and picked up all the debris that had collected at the bottom. It wasn’t nearly as dirty as we had expected it to be, but there was more debris in the bottom than we expected, which affects the water’s ability to drain.
Once the locker was done, Eric Continue reading
Today we were up early and got right to work. Christi scraped barnacles off the metal on the underside of the boat for 7 hours. It was infinitely easier to scrape most of the metal out of the water than in. The exception was the stabilizer keel cooler, which is equally hellacious both in and out of the water. Christi found barnacles in every crack and crevice, including places that she hadn’t even realized existed. She was shocked to find that several of the barnacles stuck to the top of the main engine keel cooler were bigger than American half dollar coins. It is amazing that the keel coolers continue to work just fine despite the barnacles.
Eric’s first task of the day was to Continue reading
Recently, someone e-mailed us from Bodrum, Turkey. He said he read our blog, admired our trip, that he owned a boat yard, Yatlift, and would happy to be of service if we needed work done. He generously offered to haul us out for free. Wow. We have mentioned a couple times now that we really needed to give Kosmos some more attention. We weren’t planning on taking her out of the water to do the work, but this was an opportunity way too good to pass up. Most of the work to be done would be easier out of the water than in.
Yesterday we spent the day preparing for the haul out. Christi did laundry and housework. Eric found and read the manuals pertaining to the various jobs he was planning on doing, and also gathered together the tools, which required some digging into storage spaces.
We did go out to breakfast and dinner. For breakfast, we got a traditional Turkish meal, which consists of one egg, cheese, sliced meat, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, white bread, honey, butter and a cup of tea.
For dinner, we tried coban kovurma, which turned out to be Continue reading