A Good Day for Weather and work

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We began with a pleasant breakfast at Stiftsgarden with meusli and fil followed by bacon and egg with a little herring as a side dish.

Kristin was coughing badly at breakfast but is sufficiently improved to have washed the boat and removed stains from the whole above water hull. ~We then tried to apply a waterline stripe but failed utterly to get it to stick down smoothly in the place we wanted it to be. The result was frustration and we abandoned the idea.

In the mean time I’d been working on the under kitchen Blakes seacock which had stuck. It’s almost impossible to get at the locknuts keeping the securing bolts tight but I did get there in a very uncomfortable position and a curse or two.

I then sampled the fuel tank finding a little water and some rather cloudy fuel at the bottom but less than half a litre so I’ll just add more anti bug treatment. The prefilter looks fine. The use of FAME in diesel fuel makes this problem endemic nowadays. Another  routine job was to change the gearbox lubricant which would have been easier with the boat upside down. I’m no longer happy to work doubled up. There’s too much of me in the way.

I did more work on the mast and had a tug at the aerial lead wire finding it surprisingly easy to move. Now the yard had damaged the aerial making it pretty ineffective a year ago so I needed to fit a new aerial but had been frightened of the risks of changing the aerial lead up the mast. It is very easy to break the cable or the auxiliary string.

Anyway, finding the lead movable I cut the old lead off at the base of the mast, spliced it to a piece of thin cordage and pulled the old cable out of the top of the mast followed by all the spare cordage as Alan Burwin had once told me so as to have a remedy later in case of accident. I then attached the new aerial lead to the cordage and started pulling it down the mast. This proved difficult. The problem was excessive friction at the top of the mast caused by bending the new lead on entry. It proved beneficial to prefeed the new cable in through the hole at the top of the mast. Even so it was hard work and became impossible when I started to pull the old cable back down the mast with the new one. The extra cordage length was insufficient. I cut off the cordage and resumed pulling only to find the new lead was fouled on other cables inside the mast at the exit hole. I managed to clear this by the high tech method of prodding with a pair of scissors and the aerial lead then emerged. We then had to push and feed the next 15 metres of cable through the mast to get the full length needed to reach the VHF radio. We were very relieved to get that far. In addition Totta has accepted my plea for a later launch on Friday so we can have breakfast at the hotel and leave in time to attend the launch at 9:30 a.m.

We are having a rest now and then going out for more Suchi for supper.