Action all round

23 Dec. 11


The last few days has seen some action here with a yacht catching fire and almost completely burning out. We were sitting behind the boat chatting to our neighbours when Lola, looking across the water seen a fire. The fire wasn’t very large a little bit larger than your average camp fire so we dismissed the conversation and continued making small talk. Then we heard the sound of a power boat roaring across the water at extreme speed and Lola commented that it’s a no wake zone and the idiot must slow down. And back to chitchat. Suddenly two or three cars came screaming across the grounds and we all commented that they should slow down and stop driving like fools in the boatyard. We were still discussing the idiots driving so dangerously when a fire truck came tearing threw the boat yard. Only then did it dawn on us what all the commotion was about when we stepped to the front of our boats and seen a massive roaring fire with a huge black cloud billowing across the sky. A yacht had caught fire and was rapidly being devoured by searing hot flames. The first small fire that Lola noticed was the tender that had melted loose and had drifted down steam past our view. The roaring power boat was trying to extinguish the fire on the tender.



The fire brigade eventually managed to kill the blaze but it was too late for the yacht to be saved. Being a catamaran she didn’t sink and was quite a site to behold all melted, distorted and soot covered with the mast leaning over precariously. The fire had been so hot that the boom melted away to nothing. The entire back of the boat and most of the bridge deck including the saloon and cockpit was completely gone, melted away. The front deck had collapsed and was distorted beyond use. The only parts that were recognisable were the two bows with the cross beam and trampolines still intact.



The night before last we invited some friends over for cocktails on the foredeck. The evening didn’t go quite as planned when Lola told our neighbour, Barry to get off our boat and he is never allowed back unless he apologises to her. I explained this incident simply but in reality it was slightly different. Lola asked Barry not to fiddle with the ropes that we tied up as temporary forestays to keep the mast up. He ignored her and tried to be funny by yanking the ropes even harder. Lola didn’t mince her words as she flew off the handle and explained that he was no longer welcome aboard. All I can say is there were lots of describing words used.

Burntout yacht - cockpit and saloon area

All that left of multi million rand sailing yacht

And the weather turns good...for a while

15 Dec 11


Yesterday was possibly the hottest and most humid day of this season. We struggled to work with buckets of sweat pouring out of every pore in our bodies as we moved about. At about eleven Lola and I decided that we could no longer stand the heat so we took a walk to the swimming pool for a quick dip to cool down. The water was so refreshing and the pool temperature was just perfect. There was a couple of people at the pool and I had a small moment of embarrassment when my new swimming shorts came off as I dived under the water making me lose concentration and forcing me to surface immediately after.. I hoped that no one had noticed but when I came back up Lola and Kyle where giggling away. The other people said nothing but I could feel that they had noticed so I tried to avoid eye contact with everyone for a while. Fortunately the most they could have seen would have been a brief glimpse of my very white un-tanned butt. The humidity persisted and by the time we came back to the boat from the pool we where dripping perspiration and wanted to go back almost immediately.



We cut out a small piece of the coach roof and replaced the rotten wet wood with foam core. Besides the fairing sanding and painting that is required on the boat this repair is our second to last one that is required for now. Okay possibly our third to last. The port bow has some wood rot and still needs to be done as we did the starboard one already then we can start fitting solar panels a water maker and be on our way. All other repairs could be done on route or so we hope.



There is a new boat parked next to us at the moment and this morning I was woken up at four by the new neighbour’s cat jumping into our bedroom hatch and landing on our bed. Fortunately I like cats so wasn’t to perturbed by it.



Today being the 15th would have been the day we would have to pay salaries to our staff. Oh how things have changed without this huge responsibility hanging over our shoulders. I still feel stressed out just thinking about it. Now that stress is gone but has been replaced by another, are we going to survive financially? Owning and managing your own small business has many stresses and pitfalls but money used to come in on a regular basis and even though it was never quite enough it did keep us afloat for the most part. Now every cent that we spend is gone forever, never to be replaced. The thought of that fact gives me cold shivers down my spine.



16 Dec. 11

Today is a public holiday here in South Africa and also my mother’s birthday. The public holiday and her birthday are not related but conveniently help me to remember her birthday. Raining again today and yesterday so I am limited to indoor work on the boat. I managed to sand the fairing compound that I stuck on with a trowel a few days ago on the bottom of the bridge deck yesterday but cannot continue adding more since the products are very weather dependant. It’s a long and tedious operation since you trowel the stuff on then sand most of it off just to trowel more on then sand most of it off again. This cycle can be repeated a few times dependant on how experienced you are with the stuff and how fussy you are about the finished product. My neighbour here on the hard, also called Barry, told me that someone told him, and I quote his words “if a man galloping past on a horse looks at the boat and thinks it is fair, then it is fair.”



20 Dec. 11

Only five more days till Christmas and six till my Daughter arrives. Christmas is great but I am way more excited about the arrival of my oldest child as she is by far my favourite daughter. I can say this because it is true and because she is technically my only daughter.



We started painting over some of the repairs that we have completed using 2K automotive paint. The paint gives a nice finish even though it makes any and all imperfections visible. Fortunately my eye sight isn’t what it used to be and neither Lola or I are very fussy about perfection, we are more about how well it works, so it doesn’t matter. The durability of the paint will have to be judged in time. Taking the decision not to bother fairing some of the repairs may allow us to stick to the plan and still be on our way by the end of January which means we will still be able to leave within this sailing season all be it on the tail end of the season.

Dolphin nose nearing completion

Piecing it together

Kyle loves his new hatch

We start on the steering box

We start fairing the steering box

Painted...

Morale - when things go wrong...

2 December 2011


The night before last night we went to the grand opening of the new yacht club wet deck. It was a fine evening with fair weather so sitting outside by the water was very pleasant indeed. Lola became quite engrossed in conversation with Michelle who is sailing with her three daughters and her husband on a classic monohull made from bamboo. The boat has beautiful lines but isn’t for me since the maintenance must be an absolute nightmare. As I sat watching all the different characters around me I felt a little removed not being involved in any of the conversations but rather just sitting on the sideline. This made me think that perhaps I am not a very interesting person since I haven’t got any stories to tell or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood to make small talk. Still I quite enjoyed the evening feeling as if I wasn’t really there like a spectator to a sporting event on television as opposed to a participant.



Yesterday we managed to fit the new starboard bow and glassed in on from the inside. What a messy and uncomfortable job. The space inside is really small and I could barely fit inside. Lola had to wet out the cloth on Rauens bed, then pass it to me in this cramped excessively hot little space. I had to contort my body into different shapes and make the glass stick to the underside of the new deck piece. After an hour or so I couldn’t breathe from the fumes in there and had to get out. We managed to get it all done though except for the cross beam that just wouldn’t stick and kept falling down bringing with it all the fibreglass pieces that we were using to attach it.

Today it is raining again which is probably a good thing since my arms and my legs are covered in tiny little itchy red bumps.



03 Dec. 11

We managed to laminate the glass on the outside of the starboard bow and she is looking good. Still have one or two spots that need glass then we can apply fairing compound, sand fair paint and replace all the cleats and stainless steel. At the moment she looks a bit like a shipwreck with all the repairs unpainted but will return to her former glory once we paint.



09 Dec. 11

The rain that started yesterday and is still pouring into the boat today has revealed more leaks with the old leaks that we thought we repaired still leaking. Kyle’s bed is soaked again and the water is running like a small river down the inside of his newly installed ceiling becoming a waterfall at the ceiling joints and creating a dam in the middle of his bed and all across his pillows. I am so close to just giving up on this stupid piece of sh*t that it’s not even funny. Nobody seems to be able to give advice that actually solves the leaks and everybody changes their advice on a daily basis. Today they tell you to use one product and the next day that product is useless so why are you using it? It seems there is no answer to boat leaks even huge waterfalls like in Kyle’s room don’t have an obvious point of entry like a visible crack or hole. I mean you should surely be able to see where this water is coming from but no such luck. I am even considering charging an entry fee to people to come and view the waterfall it is so spectacular yet at the same time making me feel clueless and incompetent.

Kyle's new hatch

Working on a boat is always comfortable and easy

The start of our new dolphin nose

20 Nov. 11


Anyway the rain abated for a few hours today so we took the chance and laminated some fibreglass replacing the wood rot in Kyle’s room and strengthened the port keel with six layers of glass at the aft end of the keel. If the weather holds out tomorrow then we will jack the starboard side of the boat up to allow the fibreglass dent on that side to pop back out and then add six layers of glass to the starboard keel which would pretty much make the keels bullet proof, hopefully. Lola and I had a few moments of disagreements today which is very unusual for us but I believe it to be the left hand right hand brain thing. She is left handed and I am right handed which seems like a small detail, however we seem to see things from exactly the opposite angle. Sometimes we will argue over a certain thing just to discover that we are saying the exact same thing from the opposite side. A simple example would be to draw a line, I use the one side of the ruler as a reference and she would use the other side. Another example, when I place a heavy object like a transformer oil welding machine or a battery in the back of a bakkie, I would use my right hand to pick it up and place it on the left hand side of the bakkie. A left handed person would however use their left hand to lift the object and place it on the right hand side making it difficult for me to remove it from the bakkie using my weak arm. If I twist a wire before I put it into a lug or chocolate block I would twist it clockwise. A left handed person would usually twist it anti-clockwise ensuring that I would first have to unwind it before I twist it up again if I have to replace the lug for any reason in the future. For this and many other reasons I despise working on anything after a left handed person has worked on it before. And at this point I am going to be brave and just say it, I am right, ha ha.



21 Nov. 11

Today we jacked up the one side of the boat with the help of a friend down here. We then repaired the dented in keel by adding seven layers of glass near the back end. Tomorrow we will grind inside the bilge and add another few layers from the inside. Tonight the wind is howling away making the boat shake and rock on the jacks, a little nerve racking but not to serious. Even if it falls off the jacks it doesn’t have far to go. It may however ruin the work we did today. Only a few more days before my son arrives for a long visit. I am very excited to see him.



25 Nov. 11

Yesterday we drove to King Shaka airport in Durban and collected my son. So last night was celebration time again. Today we go to Richards Bay airport to fetch Rauen our other son coming back from his week long visit in Johannesburg. The persistent rain and bad weather down here continues to hamper our progress and eats away at our morale. Every morning I wake up to the south westerly wind with the rain and I feel my spirit just seeping out the hatch. The rest of the day is then ruined as I sit glumly in the cockpit and wait for the sun that never arrives.



26 Nov. 11

We had proper sunshine this morning for the first time in weeks but only till twelve, then it rained again. Yesterday the sun glimpsed through the clouds for a few minutes so I decided to take a chance and mixed some epoxy with micro balloons to fair the last piece we repaired and to cover a leak in Kyle’s room. As I started on the leak the rain came bucketing down and I sat getting drenched trying to epoxy knowing that it shouldn’t cure because it will be wet. At that moment my morale sank to the lowest it has been in a while. I actually felt like breaking down and just sitting in the cockpit crying like a baby. But since I am a “real” man I didn’t.



28 Nov. 11

That epoxy cured in the rain so we were lucky this time. Kyle room is nearly finished, today we should fit his new plastic ceiling and then he can move back into his room. This should make the whole family happy because we get our saloon back and we no longer have blankets pillows and teddy bears all over the place. Yesterday we took Rauen to Jacks corner to celebrate his 15th birthday. He managed to devour an entire kilogram of ribs. It always surprises me how much this kid can eat and still be as skinny as an Ethiopian on diet.

The new dive platform is erected - bigger and better



Filleting the dive platform in



Dive platform looking good

Boatyard happenings

15 Nov. 11


At last some sunshine and we can continue with the repairs. The dive platform that we extended is now finished and that along with the bridge deck requires fairing and painting to be completed. Yesterday we went to an internet café to update our blogs. After two hours we weren’t able to load the photos yet so we decided to just give the photos a miss. After we laid fibreglass today I was sitting on one of those plastic garden chairs behind the boat whilst Lola was packing our shower bags when suddenly I heard what sounded like a bird flying into the starboard backstay and then falling onto the deck somewhere. Lola shouted “Barry, what was that?” I scaled the ladder as quickly as I could since I could still hear the “bird” scurrying about on the boat. Lola came out into the cockpit and asked me again what all the commotion was about saying that she thought the new dive platform had broken off. I told her about the bird story and we both looked around on deck. To my surprise Lola found a fish lashing about on the bimini roof. Wow the bird must have dropped it by accident and it hit the backstay on its way down landing on the roof. I put it back in the water but I am not sure if it will survive. But just imagine fish on the roof whilst the boat is on the land, surreal is all I can say.



17 Nov. 11

It’s just after five in the morning, overcast, hot and extremely humid. As I sit here in the cockpit my body feels hot and clammy with a consistently damp top lip no matter how many times I wipe it dry. From one extreme to the next seems to be the weather system down here. The high humidity today may prevent us from laying fibreglass since it is not only affected by the rain but also by the humidity. Tiny little near invisible insects are landing periodically on my back just out of arms reach and cause me to stretch my arms over backwards every few minutes to chase them away and scratch. Yesterday we fitted Rauen’s new portlight in his heads. That means his new window in his toilet. We also cut a hole in the deck to fit a new hatch in Kyle’s bedroom but need to fibreglass around the edge first before we can install the hatch. Using the mould that I made the day before Lola completed our starboard dolphin nose and started with the port one so today we will probably complete the port one weather permitting of course.



19 Nov. 11

Well we managed to fit the hatch in Kyle’s room after grinding most of the fibreglass that we had laid the day before off. What a waste of time that was. Today the oven glass door exploded whilst I was grinding open the keels. In fact it exploded after I had finished the one keel and sat down under the boat to have a smoke break. I heard a loud bang and heard something falling on the floor above my head. Then another sound of falling objects like marbles bouncing on the floor. I was still pondering the sound when Lola called me and told me that the oven door exploded. I asked her if she was cooking something and she said no she was busy sending an sms to our son Rauen who had flown up to Jo-burg to visit his dad. So no real reason for the glass to shatter and we still cannot explain what would have caused this.



Rauen flew up to visit his dad and granny in Johannesburg on Friday morning. Well here we go again. Never start a journey on a Friday. As I have said before this superstition shouldn’t be applicable to car or airplane journeys. But it seems once you get involved with sailing or boats in any way whatsoever everything changes and suddenly these superstitions are applicable no matter what form of transport you may chose. So on our way to the airport we see the newspaper headline that reads SA Airlink leaves its passengers in the lurch again. We turn on the radio and the news reporter’s voice announces that all flights from Richards Bay and Durban have been cancelled due to fog. When we arrive at the airport the passengers from the previous flight are all still waiting. Anyway to cut a long story short this was Rauen’s first flight on an airplane so he was very excited as well as a little intrepid and the news didn’t help the intrepid part much. We explained to him that the take off wasn’t the problem but the planes landing from Johannesburg had a problem caused by the fog and they couldn’t see the runway so he didn’t have to worry. After many hours delay the fog lifted and the first plane landed. Rauen’s flight was supposed to leave at nine but eventually left at twelve.

All struted and waiting for the new boards to set

Taking a break

Wood rot? like I've never seen!