Some kind of bliss… You may have noticed we have been remarkably quiet about the boat and our move.
And it is not because of Martin’s recent escapades with life and death that had nothing to do with two wheels and a crazy amount of horsepower of the back wheel. What is a crazy amount you ask? His last bike produced 200 rear wheel horse power.
We have experienced delays on two fronts. Delays:
- With the rigging and the installation of new in-furling main sail.
- We now need a new motor.
What the??? Yes, we need a new motor.
Through no fault of our own and an un-intentional error made by a third party a syphon break was bypassed that allowed sea water into the motor. This was not realised until it was too late to rectify. We will not be making any comments about how this came about. So please don’t ask.
We are choosing to look at the positives and now we have a new motor on its way. For the gear heads out there it is. Yanmar 55 horsepower, naturally aspirated.
So, we had to have the boat towed to a dock, motor pulled apart, craned out and the boat towed back to the finger. And I have missed the fun of whole event of being towed, cranes etc and writing about it because my gorgeous clients are keeping me super busy.
So now, we don’t have a sink or an engine in the boat. Why? What’s happened to the sink? Basically, nothing… simply the engine room is under the sink.
And now we do have a big open space where the engine was.
We have undertaken the task of clearing out thirty years of engine grease and gunge and in doing so we found 1 screwdriver, three spanners, numerous, screws bolts, washers and the odd tie-tights.
It was literally, gloves on, head down and bum up and I bucketed two x 2.3 litres of gunk. Martin helped out when he had finished installing the new dunny. Glamourous I know. Then, we physically wiped every surface we could reach down with rags to pick up the layers of engine grease before releasing three cans of degreaser across the area. This was followed with the hose down. To do this we needed to feed the hose through the cockpit, into the galley and into the cavity that is the engine room. And hose it out.
It now looks amazing. Surfaces that were black are now whiteish. We were able to lift a platform the genset sat on and another shelf that provides access to one of the bulge pumps. We bought both of them home. Martin made a new platform for the genset and painted the shelf.
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A genset is combination of a diesel generator and an engine mounted together to form a single piece of kit. It is used to create energy to run our various power appliances (washing machine, microwave, water maker kettle, lights, power cords for all our important devices i.e. laptops and phones) on the boat. This is used when we are not connected to shore power.
Another FYI…
When on the marina, each vessel has a utilities pole that they can plug into for power. Most marinas have two separate fees, one if you are liveaboard and thus using more power, and the other is if you are keeping the boat on the marina and/or occasionally staying overnight. Some marinas have a more sophisticated set up and each power pole is metered.
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You can see with the combination of events we could not move on to the boat without a toilet, engine or sink.
This weekend was meant to be our move date and we were to be out of the house by the 17th.
One week today.
When I posted sharing the adventures of our garage sale our count down was four weeks…
Our countdown looked like this. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3.5 weeks
Then we had the “What the??? We need a new motor” moment. The rest is unprintable.
Countdown reset number 1 saw it became 8, 7, 6…..
Reality check, can it all be done in 8 weeks?
Countdown reset number 2 (just in case) 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 ,3, 2, 1.
Now our exit date is the 19 June. Just to be clear that is 2020.
10 weeks and counting.
And so, the above has led to this moment right here right now. Me sitting in a quiet favourite spot, Martin whipping up brunch and me reflecting on how wonderful this normal everyday moment is.
Finally finding myself in a spot that is a little less frantic is “some kind of bliss”.
A weekend full of options, writing, reading, jigsaws, maybe making the new curtains for the boat… who knows…
Options, options, options… my kind of bliss.
