Week 4 June 11-17th – MdR – If you cant beat them join then!!

At the end of week 2 we shifted from the apartment in the centre of town to one slightly further west in the Santa Barbara area. For the first week we were on the first floor and then as the stay continued to extend we had to shift to the ground floor. The apartment close to the sea and has two bicycles which have proved great to commute to the marina and do more exploring near by. The sea varies from flat calm to windy and rough and the area is so shallow that as soon as the wind gets up the bottom is stirred up and it looks very muddy but just very fine sand. There is also a lot of sea grass along the foreshore in the high winds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well…. glass repair on the hull has finally started. One hull was completed today, Monday.

  

  

While the chief boatbuilder was doing the hulls Hew was trying to sort out the cabling underneath the console before installing a new AIS and modem for the internet. At the same time the water pump high pressure hose split – water all through under the seat. It had probably been leaking for a few days as we had not been able to figure out where the water was coming from at the end of last week. Boats!!!!!

 

Work progressed slowly through the week by Wednesday. Despite escalating from talking, smiling, pleading, probing, pushing to yelling and then getting it written down as a day to day plan,  Hew decided the only way to get the work done was to get his hands dirty.  They were just too short of staff for the big jobs and the ones they had have attention spans of gnats. Thursday he got approved by the head boat builder to help with the filling or they would not have finished it by the end of the day.

   

Friday comes around and I am down there 3 times with various bits and pieces. The morning we have one person working on the boat, lunchtime 2 and as I arrive at 1630 there are 5 figures under the boat. I think great!!! It lasts for about 2 minutes and then they all pack up and leave mid job. The excuse was that it was going to rain. Great cloud formations and thunder out to the east but nothing happened. Apparently that is knock off time on a Friday. One hull has half a gel coat completed and the other has half the filling done. So Hew starts again to finish the filling and I leave after about an hour of tidying up and reinstalling some main sheets I had washed. The yardies are all just sitting around gossiping – haven’t hurried home or had drinkies like kiwis would, just fags and chat. I am furious. Hew says he will just finish and then come home in about an hour. Hew arrives back at the apartment at 2030!!!

     

Some other items did progress. The spare anchors have both been returned galvanised. We now have two collapsible bikes on the boat for wandering other towns and other large marinas.  The stern leg of the outboard is ready for refitting after an impellor and oil change and ready to get reattached.

  

 

Saturday rest day, only because we cant get into the yard in the weekend as there is no work there then. There were several jobs we would have liked to have finished.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday was adventuring day and we went off with our new collapsible bikes to cycle around Scicli – a very fascinating town in the middle of the hills about 20 min away. I have left this town as a separate post since there was much to say and many pictures