….and also cleaning, although the Saharan rains that we´ve had have made keeping the top deck clean somewhat of a struggle. Skipper Nigel has done fabulous work so far (and there´s still two weeks of the month left to keep up the good work!!) For my part I´ve started reading another book and generally spent a bit of time relaxing aboard 😉
After our fabulous quad biking experience we´ve concentrated a bit more on life aboard and have cleared out some of the “junk” (oops I mean “things”) that accumulate on a boat and those of you who have ever lived aboard will know exactly what I mean, and we´re only weekenders!
Now, there´s no way around it, I have to tell the tale, we have been experiencing a bit of a leaky loo – not the best thing to be writing about but nevertheless something that could happen to any of us 😉 We had noticed more of an accumulation of water over the recent weeks which had lead to the seacock valve looking decidedly “stuck” so out of the water Gemini J had to come. Following on from the experiences of friends we had no hesitation in popping round to the boatyard next to the marina where we met a fabulous young guy called Fran who speaks excellent English (I´m not sure my Spanish would stretch to marine lavatorial and plumbing references although I gave it a good go!) He arranged for us to be lifted out 3 days later which was last Wednesday to hopefully have the plumbing part of the toilet replaced, oh and while we were out get the hull cleaned too.
Wednesday morning arrived and we were alarmed up for 6am – we left the house at 6:30 and were on the boat just after 8am ready to head round to the holding dock where Gemini J would be lifted out of the water. We had a 9am appointment and after a couple of phone calls we motored into the dock. This was quite an experience because we had to do a fair amount more “rope/line” throwing and catching than on previous times out of the water and the dock is way deeper than the one we´ve used before. The ropes were also huge, Skipper Nigel even managed to get clonked on the head by one and ended up with ever such a slight black eye as a result!!
This dock is designed for boats and ships, the tuna fishing boat which was out of the water being repaired is massive compared to our small sailing boat. The guardia civil boat was being maintained by military style personnel all in their standard dark green boiler suits, alongside the tuna fishing maintenance team who were somewhat more variously dressed and nearly all smoking whilst working (definitely something we´re not used to seeing!) We had plenty of time to observe all this since once we were docked – we had to wait (and wait) for the crane to lift us out of the water as it was moving Dora onto dry dock for some work, a sailing boat from Helsinki and actually our marina neighbours too.
I am not sure if I will ever get used to being involved in having the boat “lifted” from the water – it is, to put it bluntly, quite scary and you need a lot of trust in other people (not a problem) and very big machines (a bit more of a challenge for me). Every time we go to a different boatyard the procedures are a little different but more or less two big canvas bands pick your boat up into mid-air before placing it onto some very small wooden blocks.
Once we were lifted out we saw how dirty the bottom of the boat appeared, and although it is very much on the surface it is always horrible to see all the barnacles on first inspection when you take a boat out of the water. Still, one industrial jet-wash later and everything looks much better!
At this point we went for coffee and tapas whilst the cleaning was going on and we returned for Skipper Nigel to go aboard with the engineer to investigate Gemini J´s plumbing. Once the job was agreed we headed for home leaving them to finish the job and for the marina “marineros” to put the boat back on her berth later that day. Just as we arrived home my phone pinged with photos from Fran – showing us all the work that had been done, including replacing the anode! Fantastic, and fingers crossed they have solved our water issues. Don´t look in too much detail at the next photos but for the more technically minded reader they show you what work was done (and I know that will be of interest to one or two readers)
Two days later and we arrived back at the boat for the weekend, checked out the work which we were really happy with and got on with the business of ordering a new loo – well, why not since the old one had had to be removed. Not quite as simple as it seems, ordering a replacement for a Dutch loo which was installed on a French boat by a German which is now in Spain! An hour and a half of various internet searches (plus the ones Nigel had already done during the week) and we had a loo on order, at the time of writing we are waiting for confirmation of when it will be delivered from Bremen. Meanwhile we have alternative arrangements 😉
The Adventures of Gemini J 