She floats!

My last full day in the yard was spent wrestling with the replacement shaft seal that the insurance company wanted replaced.  The shaft was a nightmare to separate from the gearbox but thankfully Dirk came to the rescue again with a couple of heavy duty wheel pullers and got stuck in, then Mateus from the next door boat lent me a heatgun which saw the job done by about midnight.  I would have got absolutely nowhere with this project without these guys!

​Launch day!

As the week has gone by, boats from all around me have been wheeled away for launch.  My turn finally came & I was more than a little nervous.  I’d got quite comfortable with yard life –wake up scrape, paint, repeat.. now I was to be thrust into the unknown, on my own, with hardly a clue what to do...

​This could have been a very different story were not for my new friends Dirk and Anneke of the fine yacht Narid who offered to join me for the launch and help me cross the water to the safety of Preveza town quay.

Stephen the broker turned up for the launch to check the engine and transmission work as the should.  However there was a problem –no cooling water meant the engine was rapidly overheating.  The problem was traced to a missing water filter seal and we were soon on our way.

We did a little bit of anchor practice along the way and then Dirk & anneke showed me how to install the sails (quite a big job it turns out) before reaching the quay.  Next they suggested I get the tender and outboard out to get a feel for my new so I spent a few minutes doing doughnuts and flybys before sharing a few well earned beers, buying them supper and getting them a taxi back to the boat yard.

Since then I’ve been tied up alongside the town quay, carrying out my first engine service and generally getting things ready for my fellow sailors to arrive on Sunday.