Order from Chaos (almost)

Blue Velvet survived the winter admirably. There was not a drop of water in the bilge, the batteries were all healthy and there was no sign of damage or trouble. There is always a concern, when leaving a yacht over the winter, that everything on board will suffer because of damp and poor ventilation because the yacht is not being used. We had therefore left BV’s cabin with all the locker doors open and the cushions raised to maximise air circulation and, hopefully, minimise mildew formation. This, combined with our having put all the sails and a lot of other deck-gear below in the cabin to keep it all out of the elements for the winter, made it look as though BV had been ransacked whilst we had been away.

Bringing some sort of order to this chaos was our primary goal. Bending-on the sails so that they were not cluttering up the cabin was a logical first step. However, the decks were filthy and we didn’t want to get the sails unnecessarily dirty. Saharan dust and soot from the ships’ exhausts were the main culprits, both of which do not seem to shift with a deck brush. So, I spent 2 days on my hands and knees scrubbing the deck whilst Nicky worked below washing down all the lockers with a Milton solution to clear the little mildew that had formed and to discourage any more from taking up residence. We had expected there to be real problems with mildew as Gibraltar gets very humid during the winter but we seem to have go off very lightly. Just 3 pillows stuffed in a locker and a couple of jackets seem to be the only things that have been affected slightly. Three new fluffy pillows and a service wash at the local laundrette solved that problem.

Once the cleaning was complete, the next job was to flush and lubricate all the blocks, pulleys and clutches before the sails went back on. That was another few hours’ work but at the end of all that we could lay out the sails and bend them on. It took all afternoon to refit the battens, track cars and reefing lines but eventually the mainsail was back on the boom.  Hoisting the genoa and the staysail took much less time. Suddenly, with the sails back on BV was starting to look like a sailing yacht ready for action and, just as importantly, we were getting our cabin space back.

Gibraltar