An old friend from Split

So the big day finally arrived, our insurance survey.

A nervous tummy day!

It was clearly a bit of an important undertaking for the surveyor, who will have undergone a four day trip to perform it. I don’t know exactly how much that will have cost but it would represent a substantial part of the overall bill for our project.

We had been in communication and his flight from Istanbul was due to land at 13.20 and he expected to be with us around 15.00hrs.

The boat was duly tidied and organised so it presented its best perspective. The floor boards were lifted, the fuel tank exposed and all was prepared.

At 14.50 we proceeded up to the security gate to await his arrival. No sign of him. I wondered if we could have missed each other in transit and returned to the boat.

We waited some more. He was about an hour late and I was becoming a little concerned as to whether there had been some sort of misunderstanding. I had sent him the exact address of the Marina and recommended the transfer firm we have always used who have been totally reliable.

Still no sign of him.

Eventually about an hour and a half after we expected him, a car pulled up and a figure in a sailing jacket and beanie hat emerged, camera in hand and looking a bit flustered.

He was full of apologies for being late. Firstly the car had taken him to the wrong marina. When he finally got to the right marina, they could find no record of the boat. This was because he was looking for a boat called “Mismatch”, which was the name given to him by the insurance company. It took me a few minutes to work out what had gone wrong here.

I had noticed that when I got the reply from the insurers following my claim submission, it had been through a computerised validation process. 

When I had first taken out my insurance with them the boat was 16 years old, and fell into their “12-16 years old” category. Because time had passed it was now a few years older and this had not been updated, the computer had spat out MISMATCH as its response to this affront to its sensibilities.

Somehow this had been transposed into the name of the boat that had been communicated to the surveyor.

Fortunately the girl on the reception desk eventually recognised my name and directed him to Summertime. Otherwise he could have had a four day trip for nothing!

Affable chap

The surveyor was quite an affable chap and was recovering his equipoise. We had an introductory conversation.

He is obviously a very busy guy having just come from London, where he was giving evidence in court. As well as being a surveyor he has a PhD, is a Professor lecturing in Southampton University and advises the Croatian Government on Marina construction and Marine tourist development. Quite a portfolio.

I had been keen to find out if he had been selected because he had done our purchase survey five years ago. But I was a bit wary of addressing this with him as I did not want him to feel he had an irresolvable conflict of interest.

However my curiosity could not be contained and I volunteered the information. It obviously came as a total surprise to him, but fortunately he was completely unfazed and we carried on.

I recounted the whole tale, emphasising that the diesel leak could only have occurred as the consequence of accidental damage to the fuel tank vent. Before I could outline our plans for the work he interjected by describing them exactly.

“The diesel will have compromised the Sikaflex” he was in full giving professional evidence mode  and the jury nodded in agreement, “the keel must come off and everything thoroughly cleaned before being re-bedded and put back together. It should all take a few days but you should be back in the water in a week or so.”

We then proceeded to inspect inside the boat. He had a good look at the bilge and the keel bolts and was satisfied that the plan of work was exactly what was needed and he would write his report to that effect.

Result!

He then proceeded to admire the boat. Could it get any better? He admired M’s varnishing and said the rich woodwork looked like new! “You are so lucky to have this boat, not one of the recent production boats with thin hulls and Ikea furniture and finishing.” M was in raptures.

We then spent a happy twenty minutes admiring pictures of his boat, a 1970’s Sparksman and Stevens 42 that he had completely refurbished over a three year period. And very handsome it is too.

The whole meeting had taken about half an hour, and it did seem a very long journey for this brief encounter.

We chewed the nautical fat for a while longer and then I walked with him back round to the restaurant. We happened to bump into the engineering team outside their office. I introduced him and they agreed that all was well in the small part of the affairs of man in which they shared an interest, i.e. the plan for Summertime.

I forwarded all the photos and the works estimate and we are now somewhat more hopeful that financial devastation can be avoided.

Marina Restaurant

That evening we had been invited for drinks! There is a group of senior UK sailors who hang about together in the marina, dining each evening, and generally having a good time.

I am not sure how much actual sailing goes on but for retirees  living abroad on a boat has a lot to commend it.

One of the most senior of them, Peggy Manton is a long standing activist in the Cruising Association, but is finally giving up sailing and selling her boat, Amber Witch.

We were very pleased to be invited to join her aboard for a final send off, an excellent evening and a nice bunch of welcoming people..

So the plan is that the keel will be removed next week  and we will see what issues there are at that point.

Meanwhile minor jobs continue.

 Our radar dome mounting had broken and I had given it to the welding team to repair. Like everything else, without the language skills I have no possibility of negotiating a cost, or even roughly how much it will cost in either Euros or Lira. Or indeed that I was not just handing it over to be disposed of!

I went round to the shop a couple of times. Tricky coves, [think Peaky Blinders] a group of half a dozen welders, no eye contact and a lot of scowls then angry shouting. I could just see this guy at the other end of a Kalashnikov. This was not flashdance.

It turned out the yelling was the summons for the lady upstairs in the office to attend as she had some English. Not much however and I was having trouble getting “broken aluminium radar mounting” across. 

However eventually communication and understanding occurred and the lady from the office was actually very nice. I received the assurance that it would be done and ready for me to collect tomorrow.

This sequence of events happened a further three times. The meanest looking of the welders was getting more irritable, and the shouting and gesticulation was becoming more intense on each occasion. 

I kind of got the impression that this minor bit of aluminium welding was somewhat beneath contempt for a skilled stainless steel craftsman.

The local 4 day holidays then occurred and I went back a couple of times more without success. Eventually however the nice lady from the office upstairs had had enough and gave the welding group a total roasting, and it was all ready and hour later. It was 50 Euros, mostly for the entertainment.

It is now nicely painted and relocated on the mast with radar dome safely mounted. The question is whether it will survive the re-wiring that needs to be done when the mast goes back up.

Radar for tracking aircraft.

We previously had a rather nice wooden gangplank however it mysteriously vanished in the yard last year and we have been using our Passarelle.

 This is fine but it is not as long as a plank and there are occasions when you don’t want to be too close to a town key with uncertain underwater protuberances. 

So we had acquired a plank but it was a poor looking thing. During our absence we had left it hanging off the front of the boat with our anchor chain draped over it. This is done to reduce the rusting that would occur if it was left scrunched up in the anchor locker.

However the plank had deteriorated further, it had developed a split at one end and somehow was also splattered in various colours of paint.

So with nothing much else to do I set about trying to salvage it. I removed all the cross-members and replaced them with some wood that M had found on a Wombling trip.

I sanded it vigorously on both side to get back to bare wood. I mixed some epoxy and with a combination of long screws, epoxy and clamps, repaired the split and then put some 5mm line whipping on either end. It won’t win any cabinet making prizes but hopefully will be functional for a while longer.

I think I am polishing the proverbial

We have sat here for some time now and it has been fascinating watching the various boat yard activities. Clearly the main source of revenue for the yard is the boat lifts and tractors launching boats.

 There are several tractors with hydraulic lifts that pick up smaller boats on their steel cradles and transport them to the two launching areas, where the 70 ton boat lift picks them up and plops them in the water. This is an almost continuous process that goes on from early morning until about 11pm.

The 70 ton lift also has trips into the hinterland of the yard to pick up bigger mono-hulls and smaller catamarans. 

And then there is the 300 ton boat lift. This is the behemoth of the yard and picks up the Super-yachts and big catamarans. 

I have to admit the guys driving these things are incredibly skilled and there is really no room for error. I have not seen any incidents, not a single go round again for another go. 

And when you consider the costs that would be involved in dropping or otherwise damaging one of these absurd monsters, the drivers have nerves of steel.

Strictly come travel lifting

Initially we were put in an area away from other boats, but were surrounded at a distance on all sides. Slowly the yard has emptied out and now about 80% of the boats that were ashore have been launched and are gone. Many of those left are having work done, or have other problems. 

So we are now sitting in a fairly empty yard in splendid isolation.

Billy no mates.

The other main activity in the yard in polishing. And I don't mean giving things a bit of a clean and a buff. This is polishing on a grand scale. From dawn until dusk teams of young men are engaged in polishing, continuously. It is extraordinary to watch.

 There must be a sub group of humanity who have the mental fortitude to polish the same bit of the hull of a boat for hour after hour. A whole range of techniques are used from large mechanical random orbital sanders, to a sponge with a range of lotions and potions and a selection of cloths with further substances to give the final gleam.

The line of Superyachts closest to us have been polished to an inch of their lives for two weeks solid, presumably in anticipation of the arrival of the billionaire owners, professional crew and attending acolytes. It is painful to watch.

But we are parked in a dust bowl, and as soon as the wind arrives dust devils emerge and deposit dirt over everything in their path.

 And then there is a light sprinkling of rain, large globules straight from the Sahara which covers everything in a nasty orange tenacious muck. And the cleaning and polishing starts all over again.

I suppose this provides employment, of a sort, but what a waste of time and energy and young lives.

Summertime will have a bit of a hosedown before [if] we launch, but we wont win any sparkling awards…..