(Or at least we really hope so!)
We have been working on the boat for 3 weeks now, and some projects have finally started coming to an end. There are still many open projects, but it feels really great to have reached a point, where the boat should technically be waterproof again – yay! We have been working on 5 through-holes: three of them we have renewed all the way (new fitting, new valve) and for two of them, we had to replace the old valves that had become leaky.
Before being ready to let Désirée hit the water again, we still need to prepare the hull – we already scraped the old antifouling off, but we still need to sand it down a little before we can then apply a primer and new antifouling on top. We also need to prepare the freeboard by polishing and waxing it – today Emil and Signe stopped by to help with washing the deck and freeboard to prepare it all for the next steps. We also had a first look at the mast, which was really nice. Thanks for the help, Emil and Signe!

The process of scraping the antifouling off the hull is quite artsy in my opinion:

We are super motivated to get Désirée ready for the salty waters, but we also know that there is still a lot of work in front of us. The motor is still taken apart in many pieces, several wooden parts need attention or replacement, the mast needs some preparation, the gas system has to be exchanged, the boiler and the diesel heater have to be installed, the winches need to be cleaned, we have to take a look at some leaky windows, almost all of our electrical equipment has to be installed, we have to sort out our navigational equipment – the list goes on an on!
But of course we shouldn’t only focus on open projects, so here are two projects that we have finished already (besides the through holes, of course).
- The leaky window in the saloon got a new seal, which hopefully can keep the water out for many years!
- We finished working on the ‘mine’ – there was a lot of foam around our water tank which we decided to remove for better access to the tubes underneath it. We have been working on this for days, and today we finally removed the last foam!
Even seemingly ‘small’ tasks often end up taking hours and hours, because understanding one problem mostly leads to discovering several other problems that need to be taken care of, before the initial problem can really be solved. We can’t believe that we have been working full time on the boat refit for three weeks now and that our list of things we want to work on is still so long at this point. But we are sure it is all worth it and Désirée will be a great and trustworthy home for the next months to come! We can’t wait!

Leave a Reply