Progress at last

My smashed PC screen has been fixed and it wasn't as horrific as I'd thought it would be. Quite simple really, it took all of 20 minutes once I found the right shop.  A lesson learned, don't put your laptop into luggage booked into the hold.  The suitcases either get used for batting or trampoline practice or that travelling herd of elephants just happened to be placed in the same hold.  Anyway, I can now get to my photos.

These are just a couple of shots of a day out in London with our daughter, Robyn, (next to Nelson Mandela) and the day I met our ex-cruising friend, Peter, enjoying the last glass of wine I'll see for many a month.

 





 









 
Back to the boat.  Work is definitely in progress.  The entire cockpit, stern and decks have been sanded and spray-painted.  The teak coaming and companionway have been stripped and re-grouted awaiting final varnishing and we are almost at the stage of masking off everything to prepare for the non-skid paint on the decks.

Paul removed the roller-furler which needed some serious TLC and was fortunate to find a chap who could see to this.  There's always a hitch though.  We got it back, put it up, only to discover that they'd put the lower connections in upside down.  Down it came again, back to the workshop, pulled apart, corrected, delivered, then back up to the top to fit again.  My poor husband has had his fair share of climbing masts of late.  Thanks goodness we had the foresight to install mast steps prior to leaving South Africa and thank goodness too that he remains so fit!

The biggest job ahead of us is the severely damaged radar arch on the stern.  We think that one of the huge fishing boats got their bowsprit jammed underneath our solar panels attached to the radar arch and the wave action caused the bowsprit to rock up and down tearing away at the stainless railings and aluminium framework.   Paul has discussed this with several people and it will get fixed somehow but, as luck would have it, Indonesia is in the middle of Ramadan.....and so we wait.

Once the deck is completed, we'll be able to get to the inside.  All the hatches and port lights are covered so it's too dark to do any internal work at the moment.  All the cupboard doors have been removed to be sanded and varnished so it now leaves the fixed woodwork and general prettying up to do inside, not a small job but it will mean that we're getting to the end of this mammoth task and Calypso should be a good-looking lady again.