Back in the water

Today was a good day – we were relaunched and Blue Velvet didn’t sink; definitely a good excuse for a beer! Not that we expected BV to sink on launch but launching is always a little bit of a concern and we have had work done on the drive shaft. The work to get to this point had, however, started several days before.

We had flown out to Dalaman on 26 March arriving early evening. Our booked taxi was waiting for us and the transfer to the marina went without a hitch taking an hour and a quarter. Bags were lifted up onto BV and, after a quick check that all was well, we even made it into the marina restaurant for dinner at a reasonable time.

The newly varnished steps    

In the morning the work priority was tackling jobs which had to be done whilst BV was out of the water. The most obvious was reconnecting the exhausts for the main engine and generator. I worked on that whilst Nicky worked on putting back all of the running rigging. The next most obvious chore was servicing the 6 Blakes seacocks and so I moved on to stripped them down, greasing them and then reassembled them whilst Nicky settled up with the marina staff and confirmed that we wanted to be lifted in on Wednesday. Back on BV I reconnected the HF aerial and, whist all of this was being done, the chaps came and wash the outside of the hull. Without the thin layer of Sahara dust the new paint scheme looked even better. Down below the ‘chippy’ refitted the newly varnished companionway steps which also look great.

Somehow the hours in the day evapourated and we found ourselves back in the restaurant eating dinner. The fridge doesn’t work when we are on the hard so a perfect excuse to indulge ourselves.

Monday was primarily planned to be ‘engine day’. But, before we looked at the engine we had a very important task and that was to put ‘Blue Velvet’ back on her transom. The old name badge had, of course, been removed prior to repainting and so we had brought a new set of lettering out with us from home.

Attaching the decals was more difficult than it first appeared because the transom curves in every direction; getting the wet paper backing and lettering to sit flat was tricky. However with a few careful cuts we stuck it all down without ridges or bubbles, left it for an hour and then very carefully peeled the backing paper off.

It was then time to turn our attentions to the engine. The oil had been changed just before lift-out and so nothing needed attending to there but the anti-freeze was due a change. Anti-freeze in the Med does sound a little counter intuative but some parts do definitely go subzero over the winter.

For us the main reasons for keeping strictly to the servicing schedule is that anti-freeze helps to protect the engine from corrosion and is a more effective coolant; useful in a hot climate. With the anti-freeze drained we could rod out the cooling matrix in the heat exchanged which sometimes gets debris in it. We also removed the exhaust elbow because this can often get cocked up with carbon if the engine is run at low revs or little load for a long time. Ours was fine with minimal soot/carbon buld-up but we’ll order a new exhaust elbow when we get back home because there were some signs of pitting and corrosion and, as a result, it will probably need to be replaced some time in the next couple of years. We also changed the salt water impeller, fan belt and sacrificial anode. Hopefully all of that attention will mean that we have a happy engine which works when it’s needed to.

The loose skin fitting pushed out and ready for
sikaflex sealant to be applied and then re-tightened    

With just one more day left to lift-in we did some work on the fridge which is easier to do when we are on the hard. The fridge cooling pump and associated pipes need a good flush through every now and then and the sacrificual anodes need to be changed annually so we set to that task. It’s a bit of a fiddle because the anodes desintigrate into a grey moosh which needs to be removed before the new anodes can be fitted. We then we disconnect some of the pipewok and hook up a hosepipe to use mains pressure to flushing the cooling pipework. Along the way we exercised the salt water stopcocks and noticed that one of them was loose. With a bit of careful work we were able to undo the fixing collar ad push the skin fitting out so that it could be re-bedded down in sikaflex  and retightened. Just as well we’d spotted that one before we were put back in the water or we would have sprung a leak!

We also took a good look at the pipework for the forward heads. Unfortunately that meant emptying all of the spares out of the locker under our bunk so that we could look at the holding tank pipes. We had bought a few spare tank fittings for the contents guage with the idea of replacing my jury rigged one from last season. However, the repair is still solidly stuck down and functions perfectly so we have left it in place. The reason for looking at the pipework is that it is probably due a change and we wanted to know how much to buy. Having measured the length we trotted down to the chandlers only to find that the pipe is extremely expensive; double what it would be in England. We’ll see what the cost is in Marmaris but I suspect that work will be hold for a bit, not least of which because it is a pig of a job to change the pipes.

We pulled everything out of the aft lazarettes to restow them properly but spotted one bit of glassfibre which needs attending to. It was cut away slightly to get at a bolt to remove the swimming steps. Ali was very embarrased that he had missed that and arranged for his fibreglass chap to come and finish the repair on Monday.

Lastly we checked that the anchor windlass was working properly and then stopped for the day for showers and then retreating to the marina bar for a well earned beer followed by dinner.

We got up early on launch day, 30 March, if nothing else than it would have been embarrasing if the guys had come to lift BV back in and we were still asleep. Actually it is just as well that we were up promptly because I’d just finished rubbing down the coppercoat to ‘activate’ it when the lift team turned up. They actually wanted to lift in the yacht next to us but they weren’t ready so we jumped the queue.

BV was carefully lowered into the water and then we were let back on board to check for leaks; particulalry important given the work that has taken place under the waterline. The engine fired up immediately on turning the key and, a few minutes later, we were moored up in the marina. Sadly we are still only part way through our list of jobs so we’ll be in the marina for a few days tacking those before we can head off. However, it felt very good to be back in the water again.

Marmaris, Turkey