A bucket of water and...

Early start to the day was a quick trip down to Limassol to see Harris at Ocean Marine. Our preferred paint is Awlgrip and Harris is the importer for the island. Awlgrip seems to last slightly longer as anti-fouling and is very much harder as topsides paint. Next year (maybe the year after) we'll try to get the hull spray painted with Awlgrip.

We were picking up anti-fouling. Yes, that means we very close to going back in the water. We heard that the mark 3 electric drive is having final tests run early next week and should be dispatched to us on Thursday from Italy.

Back in the water by 8th or 15th March hopefully.

 After we returned from Limassol, Mike and Paul arrived with the Honda HP20 outboard that they had serviced. Heavy beast... well relatively.

So they backed up Mike's pickup and lifted it onto the mounting which we had repaired... connected up and filled a bucket with water so we could test it. Fired first time. Works like a dream this outboard.

Paul is now available for hire if you have problems with you diesel inboard or petrol outboard. Contact him through the Malu Marine website.

Meanwhile Tim was masking up the repairs we had done to the hull so that later we can epoxy paint them prior to anti-fouling. Actually we didn't get to the painting, because we fixed a couple of bolts on through hull fittings and did a little more wiring on the chart table.

The other thing we did was to test fit the propellor from Axiom, having machined the nut. It's not the final fit as the tab washer needs marking and start bending before we can fit permanently, but this will happen within a few days!