Refit: December update

Above: Chaos reigns below decks!



Work pressures, coupled with yesterday's less-than-sparkling attempt to get to Southampton, conspired to prevent me from going to see how Arabella's refit was progressing. But the yard's bills just kept on coming in all the same, so in desperation today I rushed through my meetings and made time to go and inspect the work done since September.

The refit was obviously going through a 'messy children' stage at the moment, with various people starting and stopping work around each other's progress (or lack of it). But the process was moving inexorably forward, and even in her unfinished state, it was becoming easier to see how Arabella would look when the work was finished.

Much of the interior work shown here was done in September and October, and the focus had now shifted to the exterior fittings. A key issue for me was the height of Arabella's guardrail. The original pushpit and pulpit were in great shape, and the stanchions had clearly been replaced at some stage and were also in excellent condition. The only problem was that they were all pathetically low. This had clearly been done with a view to maintaining the yacht's visual proportions, and it has to be admitted that in that sense, it worked well. But - call me a wimp if you like - I just couldn't see how they would engender any sense of security at sea. I like to feel that I am in, rather than on, the cockpit. I opted to double the height of the guardrail all round.

This turned out to be quite an undertaking. Each of the stanchions had an extension welded on (and the seam polished out for aesthetic purposes). The original plan was to weld extensions to the pulpit and pushpit, too. This worked well for the pushpit. However, extending the lines of the current pulpit would have led to it overhanging the bow by a considerable degree. Apart from looking odd, this would have increased Arabella's length to the extent that my marina charges would have increased. That didn't seem good for my blood pressure. After taking a deep breath, I authorised the fabrication of an entirely new pulpit. It looked the part, but I would have to claw back the cost overrun somewhere...

Once I had checked the work and taken pictures, I sat down and made a list of the other things that need to be done. Once I got back home and typed it up, it ran to four pages. Damn. I'd learned the hard way on this project that planning was everything, so I broke down the list into as many constituent items as possible and tried to put them into some semblance of order, according to their priority. Then I asked the yard to sit down with me in January and work through the list together.

I'm determined to get Arabella back into commission this coming Spring - before I forget how to sail. If all the work can't be done before then, she can go back in the water unfinished and then come out in the high season, when I rarely sail (I hate the Solent when it gets overcrowded in high season) and the yard is quiet again.

Above: New self-tailing winch (note the custom s/s base) and cockpit instrument heads to starboard.

Left: Plastimo Contest compass to port.



Above: View forward, showing an example of the stanchions which have been extended to create a full height guardrail, and the new pulpit beyond


Above: The new pulpit.

Left: New wooden panels to the rear bulkhead. The Studer Innotec MBC battery charger has now been installed alongside the 240V consumer unit (lower background).


Above: A composite photostitch showing the instrument panel, among the debris, awaiting installation.

An Unsuccessful Trip/"Deep Water"

SWMBO and the kids had left to spend a month in Italy, trailing behind them dark mutterings about the fate that would await me if I allowed work to prevent me from joining them for Christmas. So, having been a good boy and gone into the office on Saturday, what better way to pass a Sunday than to go down to Southampton and check on the boat for the first time since September?

Work had been especially heavy throughout the autumn, coupled with which I had picked up some kind of chronic cough which kept me close to the office or home. Now, feeling increasingly on the mend, I realised that this was the one and only chance I was going to get. As an added bonus, the movie Deep Water was showing at the Harbour Lights cinema in Ocean Village, so I could kill two birds with one stone and catch the movie too.

Normally, I get the train to Southampton and take the pushbike to reach the marina from the station. For whatever reason, I chose to take the car. Big mistake. The traffic making its way south-west out of central London was horrendous. I found myself in a seemingly endless snake of traffic making its way through Battersea at two miles an hour. I was just debating pulling a U-turn and heading over to Waterloo to do the sensible thing, when I drove, at a heady 10 mph, over the kerbs of one of those silly little islands that they put in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. I winced as first the front offside wheel, then the rear one, graunched over the curb which felt like it was at least six inches high, and crashed down on the other side. A grumbling noise and a floppety-floppety sensation confirmed my worst fear. Oh for pity's sake. I pulled the Alfa over onto the pavement, carelessly scattering the pedestrians who seemed to feel that they had some right to be there, and sure enough: the front was completely blown, the rear badly cracked and scarred.

Out with the jack and the space-saver (almost flat, another fine example of Italian car servicing only a few weeks ago) and whipped off the flat and replaced it with no trouble (we're self-reliant, us yotties). There was no point crawling on to Southampton on a deflated spare, and anyway the rear tyre wasn't safe, so I managed to find the nearest Kwik-fit and emerged, just as it was getting dark, £190 poorer.

Expensive game, this sailing.

Anyway, I did get to see Deep Water, at the Curzon Soho, and very good (and deeply moving) it was too. Try to see if it if you can. A tragic tale of an inexperienced sailor's compulsion to push himself to the verge of bankruptcy and beyond for the sake of...here, hang on a minute!

SIBS

I went to the Southampton International Boat Show today - much, much better than the London Boat Show at Excel. Apparently the London show is going to be 'revolutionised' for next January, according to the yachting mags. It'll need to be.

Apart from wandering around the boats on show and dreaming (as well as picking up even more ideas that can be copied for Arabella's ongoing refit), I trawled through all of the equipment stands with my wallet at the ready.

I spent a long, long time at the Raymarine stand, staring lustfully at their C-series plotters. Very, very tempting. I wasted the poor salesman's time for far too long. But in the end, I'm proud to say, I walked away. Far too expensive for my budget, and anyway I don't (and won't) have a radar to overlay on the chart display. I was thinking hard about AIS, which could also be interfaced with the C-series plotter, but actually I didn't much like the way that AIS targets were displayed on the screen. So it's back to the handheld plotter for the time being.

Instead, I wandered over to one of the large chandlers and actually got a very good price (£50 off list) on a NASA AIS 'Radar', so went for that instead. Then found the guys from the yard on their stand and upset them by explaining that they would need to find somewhere to squeeze it in. They didn't see the funny side. I was told very firmly - no more kit after this.

Just before catching the train back home, I wandered over to the marina and checked on Arabella, now safely blocked up ashore. I'd forgotten the camera (again), but was happy to see that the yard had cleaned her up really well and had made a start on installing the instruments and transducers. I'll try to take pictures for my next posting here.

Back on dry land again

Arabella was lifted out today, so that the yard can start work on the exterior items and instal the new transducers. I opted for Raymarine ST60+ instruments, as they do a decent 'value' pack containing all the bits for Speed, Wind and Depth. Also a NASA Navtex. I nearly cried when I wrote out the cheque. Was I really still the same person who had been so proud of saving all that money in this very blog, not even a year ago?

Refit: August update

Arabella's refit is going well - the yard is quieter now that most people's boats are in the water and being used, so it's full steam ahead.

Another two months have passed by and there have been a lot of changes since my last entry. So your intrepid blogger braved the rain in Southampton today and came back armed with plenty of photographs for the record.

The chippie had managed to get the new, full bulkheads installed - by cutting them in half and reassembling them in situ, amidst much cussing and increasing of his invoice. Still there they were, and they certainly weren't going anywhere. In fact they were by far the most solid part of the boat now. Little short of a nuclear blast would dislodge them. The first attempt at the instrument panel had all the hallmarks of experimentation for which the British marine industry was famous - in other words, it was wrong - but nevertheless it was possible to see that it would work, once those pesky measurement thingies sorted themselves out. The water tank worked first time - it was 10 litres bigger than specified, and I had visions of the boat submarining into the Solent chop if I ever filled the tank right up, but still there it was, functional, neat and big enough to supply water for, ooh, a transatlantic crossing at least. More information alongside the pictures below.

The Southampton Boat Show is coming up, which will hopefully be more user-friendly than the absolutely dire London Boat last January - I'm looking to pick up some bits for the refit, so let's hope there are bargains to be found!



Above: The new, full bulkhead has now been installed. My fear that it would feel claustrophobic after having experienced the cabin without any bulkhead at all turned out to be unfounded. The carpenter has managed to keep the proportions just right and access to the forecabin remains as easy as it ever was before (i.e not very, but tolerable).


The port side bulkhead, reverse side, viewed from the forecabin. The yard has left an access hatch to the seacock under the galley sink. This will have a matching panel, held in place by latches, as a quick-removal cover.




Above: The boxed-in tidy to the port side, aft of the stove. The 240V and 12V distribution panels are now in situ, as are the 240V socket and the Silva VHF DSC (which came with the boat when I bought her, but which had never been connected up or used). The blank space between the radio and the socket is unfortunately too small to hold the instruments that I agreed on with the yard, so they are going to have to re-cut the panel and shift the distribution panels and the radio aft by a few centimetres, in order to gain the necessary space. An ST60 Graphics Repeater and a Nasa Clipper Navtex need to squeeze in here. Forward of the socket, to the right of the picture, is the new tidy which runs forward to the bulkhead. The whole length has been installed in such a way that the (original) stove cover will still slide freely aft to act as a chart table/work top if required, and to allow access to the stove. Most of the new joinery has either not yet been varnished or has only received one coat, so it will look a lot nicer when that has been done.


Left: This is the new, custom made Tek-Tanks fresh water tank, sited in same position as the original (in fact, strictly it has been installed inside the original tank). It holds 46 litres, but the idea of sticking 46Kg up in the bow like that doesn't strike me as too intelligent, so I doubt it will ever be filled right up. In the background, the filler and breather pipes which lead up to the new deck fitting. This was never installed on the 'deluxe' boats by the manufacturers, leaving the proud new owners to fill up with a hose-pipe through the forehatch. We had a debate about whether to box the pipes in for cosmetic purposes, but to be honest the yard has done such a nice job on them, and I like things that look functional and well-made, that I think I'd as well leave them as they are. Note the badly cracked foreheatch, which is leaking - another item for the list...


Above: The new filler fitting to the foredeck.