What a week!!!! Picked up our rental van on Saturday morning to find that instead of a reasonably sized van we were given an enormous one. No choice, Enterprise said it was doing us a favour and it didn’t even fit on our drive at home!!! Anyway we soon packed the van (less than half full) and headed north. Stopped over just north of Manchester and then after a big breakfast at the Tebay services carried on to Ardrossan in the pouring rain. All a bit stressful but arrived safely. Quickly checked Harvard over and then headed to the local hotel.
The following 3 days disappeared in a blur fixing the engine , painting the bottom and propeller, re-fitting the bow thruster propeller, checking and greasing the seacocks, re-fitting the rope cutter, etc. In other words doing all the things that couldn’t be done with Harvard in the water and making sure the engine worked so at least we could move once afloat. One thing we had not spotted was that during some storm one of the guardrail stanchions had been ripped out. The bolts had just sheared off. Why hadn’t we spotted it before? Anyway panic to order spare parts. Collapsed at the hotel every night not helped by Richard having a heavy cold and cough.
Thursday morning the yard crew were there bright and early to launch us and they were fantastic. Very professional and even helped to take Harvard over to our berth in the marina. Then it was more unpacking of the van including the mattresses so that we could sleep onboard but the real achievement was that we were able re-fit the sails whilst the wind was light and on the bow.
Spare parts arrived for the stanchion so that was the first job on Friday morning. Richard’s brother Malcolm arrived in the afternoon and he helped finish unpacking the van. We had a pleasant meal onboard with him to round off another productive day.
The weather during the week was amazing, cold but with light winds, so Malcolm was able to help Richard to the top of the mast so that he could refit the wind transducer (speed and direction) and organise some other lines on the mast. We then took the van back to Kilmarnock and Malcolm kindly provided the return journey to Ardrossan. Then son Thomas arrived from London and after doing shopping and other chores we all set off for a well deserved dinner at the local restaurant before Malcolm left for the long journey back home to near Montrose. It was great to see him as living so far apart we do not see him that often.
A really full on week so totally exhausted but we are almost ready to go tommorow, Sunday, providing the forecast is good.
gosh, what a lot of work! but at least you can get afloat!