Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: Back on Songster

We are back on Songster and the forest of masts has grown even denser since we left last year. The marina at Marmaris is a hive of activity. Boats of all sizes and shapes are getting ready to launch for the season.

Bob on the aft deck amongst a forest of masts

We have unpacked the 70kg of clothes and equipment we brought with us and fortunately still have plenty of space. Songster was easy to settle into, even on the hard with limited plumbing and no refrigeration. We are beginning to put our own touches to the boat with the kids’ picture taking pride of place.

Kids' picture soon to be hung on the bulkhead

The number and size of mega-yachts that have come onto the hard since last November is just astonishing and they all have crews polishing, painting and fixing. One even installed security cameras mounted on poles bolted to the concrete at each corner of the yacht with thick cabling to the cameras. We had great fun speculating why such exc-ess security was needed – crown jewels, Rembrandts, cases of Moet or something more sinister like Mafioso rivalry? The later is not at all farfetched as the owner of one of the mega-yachts, called The One, is currently doing time.

Mega-yacht with security cameras

There is a huge sailboat under that covering

The marina. The blue yacht in the foreground is The One

The OTT opulence aside the majority of yachts are occupied by grotty yachties in daggy work clothes doing their own work. Yours truly are definitely in that category. The first easy job was getting the barnacles off the propeller.

The propeller after a scrub with a wire brush

All shiny

The next job is to replace all the windows on the hull. The first rule of sailing is to keep the water on the outside of the boat and we had some leakages during the northern winter which stained some of the wood in the aft cabin – another future job to revarnish. So Songster is flanked by scaffolding and I am scraping off the old Sikaflex around the windows. Just before launching the bottom will be painted with a fresh coat of anti-fouling.

Songster with scaffolding and the rickety ladder for getting on and off the boat

Then there is the usual polishing of chrome and cleaning away the winter grime, which turns out to be a lot less than we had feared. They have had so much rain over the winter that the boat has been washed quite clean.

The big job for which we need to contract is to replace the 40 year old, 10,000 hour, 500kg non-functioning Perkins engine with a new 250kg turbo Yanmar. This will be a huge and expensive job. The Marlin diesel mechanics are coming tomorrow with the quote. I might have to give Bob prophylactic Valium before they come to dull the impact of the price tag. Still the silver lining is that the new lighter engine will let us provision 250 kgs more gin and Sailor Jerry.... But the details of this job are for another post.

The weather has been unseasonably cool – more like mid-winter in Canberra. One afternoon I had to cut the outside work short because my fingers were going numb. But Sunday was a beautiful sunny spring day and we took a break from boat maintenance for a short walk admiring the spring flowers and beautiful glistening Mediterranean around the marina.