More Routine Servicing

Gibraltar is a good location to get life-rafts serviced. In other places in the Mediterranean the life-raft needs to be sent away, often hundreds of miles, with the resultant concerns about it potentially getting lost in transit, not getting the chance to see it inflated, and the obvious worry about quality control on the work. Life-rafts need servicing every 3 years which is not too bad but it does seem to come around quickly. Ours only seems to have been done a couple of years ago but actually is due for another service in March 2014. We therefore made some calls expecting to have to leave it over winter. “Only if I can service it this week”, was the response from the ex Queen’s Harbour Master of Gibraltar who has now retired and runs a liferaft servicing company to ‘keep himself busy and the kids in education’. Perfect for us with just one week planned to be here. We took the opportunity to see our liferaft inflated to remind us of where the various bits of kit are; clearly an insurance policy we hope we never need!

Of course the other ‘routine’ bit of servicing which is needed is on the main engine. We never seem to get close to the limit of hours between oil changes but the old was pumped out and fresh oil poured in to keep this most expensive and potentially vital piece of equipment feeling loved. It always seems like a worthwhile investment of time and resources. It is not difficult but with, as a minimum, a new oil filter, new oil, a new impeller and a new anode needing to be found onboard and then fitted it all takes a little time. Unfortunately a small piece of the old impeller had broken off and so our short routine service took a little longer than expected because we had to pull apart some of the cooling pipework to find the missing piece.

As a complete contrast to messing about with oil and the engine, we cut and fitted a new underlining for the mattress in the forepeak. Whilst flexible, the two ‘string vest’ layers are held apart very rigidly by a honeycomb of thin plastic sticks. This will apparently lift our mattress and allow for better air circulation preventing any condensation patches. It seems like a good idea for sleeping in hot, or indeed cold, climates so we will give it a go and see if it works.

With seemingly very little achieved the sun was setting and turning our surroundings golden again. Quite beautiful and, of course, an excuse to stop work for ‘sundowners’, but we did reflect on how everything seems to take much longer to get done onboard a yacht.

Gibraltar