Hard work begins

Well, now the hard work has begun. Some mornings last week and over the weekend Tim came down to remove the old Treadmaster from the deck.

No, this wasn't the state of the deck when we took the boat over, this is with the old Treadmaster chiseled up and not yet swept up. One thing we found was that in the sun the old Treadmaster and glue melted into a horrible sticky mess if you didn't sweep up almost immediately.

I thought removing the old Treadmaster would be a nightmare, but was just very hard work.

Mark was helping and the first job was to chisel up all the old Treadmaster. It has done well, the surface is over 20 years old, but now has to be totally removed.

Not the kind of job to be done in the height of summer!

After the Treadmaster is romoved all the old glue will have to be removed so that the new Treadmaster can be stuck down with new epoxy.

Tim tried many techniques, but the most effective was a wire brush attached to an angle grinder.

Cleaning off the old glue has revealed a few places of minor crazing on the deck which we will have to investigate.

I have replaced the shore power for the boat. Originally it had a 13A plug to 13A cable to plug in the boat, but that is distinctly dangerous, so it now has a 16A blue splashproof connector.

Been working on sea cocks too. At least two of them were seized. With some gentle persuasion Tim managed to get both free. One will need the wedge between the seacock and the hull changed.

Checked out some of the motor problems. Last weekend Ken came down and gave a thumbs up to the motor[s] and now need to derust, clean and get working.

Last weekend David came over about the solar power for the boat, bringing the regulator and forgetting the solar cells... oh well... will collect from Limassol sometime.

This Saturday the Raymarine guy came over and quoted for new navonics for the boat.

Well, that sort of brings us up to date, and will try to update more regularly.