Final Spring refit visit ...

Photos can be found here.

I was up over the weekend, plus Friday and Monday, doing all the usual stuff - anti-fouling, hanking on sails etc.  Also some minor repairs - fixing the fuel lines, reinstating the reserve water tank, epoxying the toe of the keel where I clipped it carelessly in Pierowall, making a new place to keep the life-raft ...

I also added another notch to the J-prop.  I think another half knot or so is available without pain.

I should be launching on Thursday morning.

I jet-washed the hull before anti-fouling, and found evidence of reasonably sound looking Coppercoat under the flaking paint (see the photos).  A longer term plan might be to clean back to this and refurbish it.  But it's nice to know there really is an epoxy skin in there.

I've put the liferaft in the forward end of the cockpit, under a removable 'bridge-deck'.  This is a bit experimental - I'll make something prettier than a sheet of 18mm ply once I'm convince it works.  It gives me a nice place to sit under the sprayhood with my feet up, is a handy platform/worktop within reach of the companionway, and puts the liferaft in a really accessible place that it would float out of automatically in extremis.  It makes it very slightly more awkward to get in and out of the companionway, because I have to duck under the sprayhood.  At the moment I think this is a reasonable price to pay, but we'll see.  I'll post a photo later - I forgot to take one.