Now that Don and I are back on Enjoy, there’s lots of work to get her ready for sailing after being closed up for four months. This is the side of sailing that visitors don’t see when they come for a relaxing vacation. But good maintenance and preparation is key to an enjoyable season. So, below are only a few highlights, a lot of other work was going on as well.
How do you get very heavy stuff to an extremely remote island?
We ordered 100 meters of new 10 mm galvanized anchor chain, 10 liters of SeaJet 039 Mono Component, and SeaJet PellerClean. So, how to get this very heavy stuff to our boat, which was a plane away from Tahiti, and a 1.5 hour open ocean small craft delivery boat ride? Using the cruiser’s network on Whatsapp and Facebook, and a bit of research, we purchased these items from Michel at Tahiti Yacht Accessories. Michel then arranged to get our deliveries to our little island atoll of Apataki. And, by joining the Association des Voilers En Polynesie, we also received a nice 15% discount on our purchase. For that that, we paid $50 for shipping.
Michel’s team placed our items on the Cobia III General Cargo ship that is responsible for trans island shipments among the Tuamotu islands. Cobia II dropped our cargo off on the Apataki town dock. Then, Apataki Caranage picked it up on their 40′ motor boat and brought it to Enjoy sitting on the hard via forklift. We had Don Green from MeriMarine create another anchor roller, in order to ensure the chain slots in perfectly to prevent twist as we repeatedly raise and lower the new chain. The Caranage will reuse our old chain to strap down boats like Enjoy during cyclone season.
Food by forklift
We had basic food items delivered to us in the same fashion from SIPAC, a big box grocery store, for a modest delivery fee.
Fun with antifouling paint and Gflex
Know that while we didn’t need to repaint the bottom, but since we weren’t sure when we’d be hauled out next, we figured why not put another layer of paint on in the 90 degree F heat while we’re on the hard! We did need to replace the propeller coat since PropSpeed didn’t hold (although it stayed nicely on the sail drive itself).
It was also time to give some love to our 12 year old Highfield dinghy, so we spent hours removing the non-skid adhesive that had thrown in the towel from too much sun and sand. Removal was hard, but a combination of sanding and heat gun did the trick, and hopefully Gflex 2 part epoxy will due the trick to keep those non-skid pads down for another couple of seasons. Our COVID project dinghy chaps needed some resewing and now the dinghy is ready for prime time.
Leaky head thru hull replacement
It was a very small leak but a leak is a leak, and we try not to let them exist on Enjoy. Let’s just say it would have been soo much harder to remove our 4″ thru hull the old way. Don found a handy trick from Spoondrifters Todd’s Tech Tuesday Youtube channel, and we removed our thru hull bedded which had been installed with 3M 5200 in 1/10 the time it would have typically taken for removal. Check it out!
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