Leaving Martin's lovely house with regret on Sunday morning, we made straight for the boat-yard and got the car close to the boat to ease further loading (car to boat) and unloading ( tools not needed while cruising). That took some time as the deck is about 3 metres from the ground. I left Kristin to stow clothes etc. while I started on outside jobs, scraping the anodes, patching the bottom paint and greasing the Kiwiprop. We've had the Kiwiprop for some years and greased it annually. Sadly the special grease required tends to weep out an oil from the grease gun and, although I'd bought more grease, I just could not face digging out old grease and putting in a new tube. It would have been very time consuming and dirty work. Something to look forward to in the autumn. I also had to check over and grease the seacocks. Again it's not one of my favourite jobs as it requires extreme contortions and a special spanner used for nothing else. We also checked into Stjarnholm to our usual room with a big pottery stove and rather nice breakfasts.
Monday was occupied with fitting a new masthead combination light with a two wire lead. Current flow in one direction gives a tricolour and reverse flow an all round white. This too was troublesome as as I could not drill through the stick Stainless of the mast cap. In the end I had to use existing holes and amixture of pop rivets and self tapping screws.The evening gave us our first visit of the year to Kohiro for a suchi feast.
Monday was hard work with a 170 mile round trip to Taby, north of Stockholm to retrieve our liferaft after an expensive service. The road through Stockholm is busy and complex but Tomtom obliged well. Ekens Naval the service agent had an enormous reversible open liferaft capable of holding 175 people on test. If filled with water it would have been able to hold half a dozen boats the size of ours. The firms personnel were friendly and expert.
Wednesday was launch day and we found that both Totte and his replacement were out sailing Totte's boat so Jet's assistant was Jimmy, the yard manager. Together, they got the launch done and the mast raised and went off to the marina to continue fitting out. The usual routine of mast tuning, boom and sail fitting etc. followed. In addition we made sure that the holding tank could be emptied.
Because of problems with overheating I fitted a new thermostat as a precaution. By the end of Friday we were fit to go and we had a reasonable forecast but a threat of worse weather later.
We made an early visit on Saturday morning ( 27th May) to City Gross to buy food and dumped the car in the boatshed for the summer.
By 1105 we were ready to leave said our goodbyes to Mikke the harbour master and set off for Stockholm.
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