It was all going to plan until the wheels fell off

Long-suffering followers of this blog will know that Maunie's teak decks have been a source of trouble for the past few years. In the heat of the tropics the caulking between the planks degraded and we started to have water leaks so we've systematically cut out the old sealant and replaced it (a painfully slow job) knowing that it was only a temporary fix. 

Cutting out the old caulking in the tropical paradise of Chesterfield Reef 

After 21 years the teak is worn and in some areas the planks have cracked and lifted. Meanwhile her hull still bears the scars from when she dragged her anchor in Suva and the Coppercoat antifouling is wearing pretty thin after 8 years good service.

So we've decided to do a refit this summer to attend to all three issues and, rather than pay hugely expensive yard labour charges, we're tackling as much of the work as we can ourselves. The biggest challenge so far has been to access the nuts and bolts fixing a wide array of deck fittings which has meant removing all the head-linings (ceiling panels) below decks and finding just how difficult it is to access some of the nuts.

Di is a much better size than Graham to access some of the trickier fittings!

Lifeline stanchions and other deck fittings painstakingly removed

Lifelines, handrails and self-tacking track removed

Graham gets to grips with the mast wiring.

So far we've clocked up about £3,000 of labour costs (based on boatyard pricing) and the good thing is that we know how everything is fitted. It's given us the opportunity to re-think the location of many of the fittings that we've removed so that when we replace the deck (with a synthetic teak-alike system called Tek-Dek) we can minimise the number of bolt holes that we have to drill through it.  We can't say it's been fun, and the recent wet weather has hampered us a bit, so Graham became quite cabin-feverish when he spent 7 days aboard on his own to start the job whilst Di went to stay with her dad. On the only sunny day of the week he was delighted to get off Maunie and do a 5 mile walk along the coast path and back into Dartmouth.

Looking across the Dart entrance 

The Dart, with Kingswear village across the river

On river entertainment as the sailing cruise ship Sea Cloud comes in

 Anyway, we've made good progress and were due to be lifted out of the water at a little boatyard in Totnes  on Thursday morning. Unfortunately the night before we received a call to say that one of the wheels of the boat hoist had suffered a puncture which, on closer inspection, proved to be caused by the wheel rim itself corroding! A replacement didn't arrive until Friday by which time we'd missed the tide and now the neap tides are too small all next week to be able to lift us out. So we've lost 10 days of our planned programme which is a bit of a disaster for us so we're re-thinking timings and plans to make up for lost time. The big unknown for us is how difficult it will be to remove the old teak and what state the deck will be below it. Fingers firmly crossed!

The end of the cruise

Well, that was a really excellent 3 week cruise - we covered 782nm and discovered some excellent new anchorages as well as re-visiting old haunts. Here is a final selection of photos from Scilly to Dartmouth:

The view of Porthcressa from the east - in the foreground are some great allotments shielded from the wind by high hedges

Impressive rock formations at the SE point of St Mary's

Our hike around the SE coast of St Mary's took us past the final resting place of PM Harold Wilson....

…. and past the end of the airport runway

When the siren sounds, walkers must give way to incoming planes!

Having visited the southernmost Australian vineyard (on Bruny Island, Tasmania), it only seemed right to stop at the southernmost British vineyard

The downside of all this lovely sunny weather in Scilly was, of course, a distinct lack of wind so we left the islands at 05.30 in glassy conditions:

A larger-than average sea mammal - we had a whale take an interest in us

Unfortunately, we only managed to catch this very brief video clip:

Calm conditions allowed us to pass close to Lizard Point (normally you'd keep well clear)

RNLI action as we approached Falmouth

 We anchored off St Mawes, next to sister-ship Quahog, and had a misty start to the following morning:

 Whilst in St Mawes we took the opportunity to visit the beautifully-maintained 16th century castle:

So Maunie is now back on her mooring and the next excitement for us is to haul her out at Baltic Wharf in Totnes in about 3 weeks' time for some serious TLC. Hard work and probably not much fun for us, but she deserves it.

Notes From a Small Island

We are back in English waters (well, Scillonian ones at least) after a good-as-it-gets 27-hour, 160nm crossing of the Irish Sea (gentle spinnaker run, nice breeze overnight and not too rolly). We thoroughly enjoyed our cruising around Bantry Bay and then down to Crookhaven and Baltimore (Maunie's original home).

Here are a few pictures:

Maunie's anchorages, from Dingle, to the north, to Baltimore in the south

Glengarriff - every bit as lovely as we'd hoped

Relaxing in Glengarriff Bay

The lovely Italianate gardens on Garnish Island, Glengarriff

The top of the Martello Tower on Garnish Island, built by the British in 1809

The excellent new town marina in Bantry, with a visit from the Irish Navy

Bantry House, still in the same family since 1720 but the upkeep looks like a struggle. There's no National Trust in Ireland so the family live in a wing and open it to the public but it needs a lot of money spending on it.

Dolphin escort out of Irish waters. We had 3 Pilot whales with us for a while as well.

Porthcressa anchorage on St Mary's, Scilly.

From the Garrison, looking towards St Agnes and Gugh

Hugh Town Harbour, St Mary's

The Harbour at low tide. The white ship is the Scillonian which comes over from Penzance every day, bringing visitors and provisions

16.30, and the Scillonian departs for Cornwall

A brilliant idea on Porthcressa beach

We will have another day on St Mary's, hiking over to the east coast, then head back to Cornwall tomorrow. It's about a 5 hour sail to Newlyn, though we think that some diesel will have to be burnt as there's precious little wind in the forecast.

Wonderful Irish sailing

The wind may be on the cool side but we've had sunny, settled weather for the past few days to enjoy this absolutely beautiful part of Ireland.

Three nights in Dingle gave us time to recover from the night sail, visit the very good Dingle whiskey and gin distillery and have a brilliant night in the quirky Dick Mack's pub. Dingle is definitely a key stop in the Ring of Kerry tourist trail so there are lots of American and German accents to be heard around town and every pub offers some kind of 'traditional' music for the tourists - often it's not too great. We were very lucky when a group of 6 musicians, 3 Irish and 3 Czech asked if we'd mind if they came into our little back room in the pub to play. They were fantastic and we stayed till after midnight.

Time to move on, so we sailed out of Dingle on Friday and were treated to a farewell wave of the fin by Fungie, the resident dolphin who has made the outer harbour his home since 1983 and has brought a lot of tourist income to the trip boats who take visitors out to see him every day.

We've started to head south but have taken the time to go deep into the Kenmare and Bantry bays to find some sheltered and very picturesque anchorages - first to Sneem and then through Dursey Sound, the narrow gap between the mainland and the island at the bottom left of the map, to head towards Glengarriff.

Flying our Irish Flag spinnaker (a set of stitched photos so the sea gets an interesting texture!)

Going up river in the dinghy to the little town of Sneem

The local wildlife

Our anchorage at the mouth of the Sneem River

Heading towards Dursey Sound

Safely though the narrows

Our track shows we had to keep very close to the island to avoid the shallows in the centre of the sound. The "4KN" on the chart means that the current runs at up to 4 knots (about 5mph) so it's vital to arrive at slack water to avoid being pushed towards shallows or rocks.

We had a great sail on to Adrigole Harbour yesterday, a beautiful but empty bay on the north side of Bantry Bay for a quiet night on a mooring. As forecast, the wind is now increasing from the SE again so we'll move on to Glengarriff, right at the head of Bantry Bay, this morning - it looks really pretty and will offer complete shelter from the wind.