Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure
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There are many schools of thought as to how you should treat a boats running gear (props, rudders, shafts, brackets etc). SAKURA came from the factory with it all anti-fouled, last time we anti-fouled the hull, we slapped another coat onto the running gear. It does protect those parts, but it gets gnarly with time. So I have decided, that because we use the boat a lot, protection is less important than have clean polished surfaces. I'm persuaded that nice polished surfaces will improve fuel consumption and performance. So todays job is to remove all the old shit. It is going to be a long, nasty job
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@Giles Crikey, someone's gonna have achey arms this evening! Good Luck!
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@Alex I guess now that it's out of the water, it's different. but I thought that these stuff were preventive maintenance that is usually done time to time in the water?
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Loads of shit....
Most of the flat faces I can do with a flap disc on an angle grinder. Then the difficult bit to get to, various steel and brass wire brushes, manual and cordless drill.
The shaft I did with long lengths of #120 sand paper roll wrapped around the shaft and back and forthed....
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@Giles said in Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure:
The shaft I did with long lengths of #120 sand paper roll wrapped around the shaft and back and forthed....
Sounds like a different version of Karate Kid. It would make Mr Miyagi blush.
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do most boat owners just pay to have this done @Giles? or do they do it themselves less frequently? Does the marina require boats to be taken out and maintained a number of times per year? or do you simply not have a choice if you want your boat operational?
maybe it's like getting a vehicle serviced. every 6 months you have to take her out and give it a once over?
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I think that it is very variable. Most people who own boats I know take them out of the water once every 6 months or year (but then I'm in an echo chamber). At the very least you should check the anodes and jet wash the hull. You can do a "lift and hold" to do that, but this time I wanted to cut, wax and polish, check and top up anti-foul and sort out a warranty issue with one of the trim tabs, which required replacing a "hull-thru". I've taken the decision to pull her out again in October, because I want to check how my new anode regime is working, probably re anti-foul her and see how my bare metal running gear is holding up. I will get all sorts of deals on the lift out and trades in October, so I'm thinking of making that my annual pull-out. The yard was horrendously busy this time and there were only 2 slots all week for them to put us back in the water.
Having said all that, there are some extremely sad boats in the Marinas and on swinging moorings. People have fallen out of love with sailing, run out of money, inherited a boat, but aren't interested, bought. one and scared themselves shitless the first and only time they have taken her out etc etc.
Brighton Marina is a graveyard of rotting boats, the mooring fee's are very low, so you get loads of people who cant afford to live in a house living on a boat, but clearly money is still a struggle. The same too in Gibraltar, but that is more about broken dreams, people who wanted to sail the Med, round the world, across the Atlantic, but got as far as Gibraltar and then gave up, the Marinas are full of basically floating wrecks. I call it the Sea of Broken Dreams....
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@Giles That is a great read
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Oh sorry, I only partially answered the question. Many owners pay to get all this shit done, but then many owners struggle to put 50 hours a year on the hull (Paula and I are at 610 in 21 months), and treat them as floating cottages/gin palaces.......Not that I am meaning to be judgmental. But, it is important to me that I understand as much as possible about how the boat works and what to do when it breaks. Every time we do something like this I know that I know the boat better, and I think that makes me a better sailor, certainly a better owner.
We have found a number of issues with the boat (all warranty stuff) that probably exist on every one of these made. But we are pushing the boat probably more than any other owner, so we are finding stuff that no one else has found, changes have been made to the production line as a result.
