The real meaning of BOAT

Domestically Songster is wonderful.  She is very pretty, very comfortable and has all the conveniences of a land home.  We are enjoying living on her and after 5 months of travelling and eating in restaurants, I am enjoying cooking meals again.

The comfortable salon

Fully equipped galley

But we want to be more than Pontoon Rats.  We want to sail.  Sadly as we get to know the hidden recesses of Songster we realise she needs a fair amount of work before we can feel confident sailing her.  I am glad Bob is so handy technically but this means most of the work to be done falls on his shoulders.  He goes from being totally overwhelmed to being a bit more sanguine.

Bob overwhelmed by the tangle of wires behind the Navigation panel

A more sanguine Bob

First was the wiring – a total mass of spaghetti.  Bob pulled out metres and metres of wire that was not attached to anything.  Slowly Bob is begining to clean up things but there is still so much to do.  The circuit diagrams are more aspirational than accurate so Bob spends his day tracing wires through the recesses of the boat. 

What are all these wires for?

But wait, there's more!

Just a sample of the wires Bob pulled out that were unattached and went no where

Bob's beginning attempts to tidy up the wiring

While rummaging around the engine room Bob found something much more serious, a rusty worn steering cable.  We were shocked that this was not found in the survey.  The implications if we had gone out motoring in the bay and the cable failed does not bear thinking about.  To the surveyor's credit, when we told him about the cable, he came to investigate, admitted he blundered badly and reimbursed us towards getting the cables fixed.

The damaged steering cable

Then the refrigerator failed.  We contacted Ali in town, who doesn’t speak much English but is a very good refrigerator technician and he came to the rescue.  To our horror the refrigerator was leaking R12.  So we got it properly re-gassed with the less environmentally nasty gas, R134a.  Now the frig/freezer is working a treat and we even have ice cubes for our G & T’s!

Tomorrow the marine mechanics are coming because the starter motor doesn’t seem to want to engage.

Thus we are learning the real meaning of BOAT ownership – Bring On Another Thousand!