29 May - 6 June Keizersveer Our next adventure was going into dry dock for Moondance's 7 year re-certification (ES-TRIN or CVB). This is effectively a safety and compliance check, and included checking the thickness of the hull. We were quite excited as we had never seen her out of the water, but also a little nervous as we weren't sure what to expect. On Wednesday we had the boat taken out of the water at about 9:30 am. We were asked to leave while they moved her and weren't able to return for about 4 hours (we hadn't expected to be gone for so long and didn't have money, phones or bikes). Once she was on dry land, she was washed with a pressure hose and we were able to have a look at her in more detail. The most obvious thing was a large structure sticking out of the bottom of the hull. Later we learned that this might have been for removing water from the bilge when she was a cargo vessel. Eventually she was settled onto stools and wedged there with pieces of wood. Only then could we return to living on board. Of course entry and exit was via a long ladder. I grew quite used to it, and could even carry loads up and down the ladder. Marcel the manager at Altena, had a look at the hull with us. Apart from the bilge drainage sink, there was the raw water cooler inlet, the bow thruster tunnel, the depth sounder, the water inlet hole for the toilet (we use canal water to flush the toilet), the toilet outlet hole, and the bilge pump outlet. There was also an old depth sounder hole, adjacent to the current one. Also there was some signs of electrolysis on the rudder and a couple of other places, and some of the anodes were painted over, so were unable to do their job (ie. sacrifice themselves by corroding so that our hull won't corrode so quickly). The reason for the electrolysis could be another boat moored near us had a power leak, we have a power leak, or the anodes couldn't do their job. Thursday was a holiday in the Netherlands so many people also had Friday off. The workshop at Altena was closed (although the chandlers shop was open) so the shipyard did no work on the boat until Monday. But our surveyor came on Friday. He has a reputation of being thorough, which is a good thing when it is a safety survey, but can be bad thing if he gets finicky about following everything exactly to the rules. Lucky for us he was thorough in a good way, and was patient in explaining to us anything that we didn't understand. We came away from the survey with 3 things we had to do before we leave the port. 1) Get our AIS certified (we thought it was but, after checking, we found that it isn't); 2) Replace the anchor which had rusted through and was unsafe; 3) Replace the rear bearing on the drive shaft which was very loose. In fact when they dismantled it they found that it had fishing wire around it, that may have stopped the grease from reaching it's intended destination, and may have been a partial explanation of our stern gland problems. In addition there are about 21 other things we need to do within 3 months. Many of them are quite small jobs and we have already gotten stuck into doing many of them. The biggest is to have fuel shut-off valves outside the boat for all fuel going into the engine room. We already have this for the engine, but not for the generator, diesel stove or central heating. In addition we only have one anchor light, rather than two, which is required in the Netherlands: one at least 2 metres high at the stern, and one 2 metres higher than that at the bow (or mast). Finally he thought we should remove the old bilge drainage sink and the old depth sounder hole, and would have preferred that we do that immediately. He also agrees with Marcel that we should get the ship sand blasted, but Marcel doesn't have capacity at the moment to complete these jobs, so we have agreed to do these jobs in about 3-4 years. Our surveyor also measured the thickness of our hull. It is in good shape, with nothing thinner than 4.2 mm, (the minimum required is 3.5mm). We thought the surveyor's way of recording the jobs and hull thicknesses effective - he just wrote in chalk on the boat. We also had Wim, Jean-Marie's dad, visit us on Friday which was nice. He only lives about 9kms away. Two main issues we have when living on the boat when she is in dry dock are: 1) we cannot flush the toilet so have to get buckets to do so and 2) we only have a 400l black water tank and, in addition to toilet water, all water put down the drains go there, so we have to be careful, and indeed bucketed water to the nearby drain rather than fill our tank. When the office or shop is open we can use the toilets there, but at night we are using the one on the boat and minimising flushing. No showers, but Howard and I are having a wash each day instead. Sunday we decided would be a day off, and it was going to be a lovely day, forecast to be 30 degrees. But I woke up feeling unwell (probably a combination of very bad hay-fever and exhaustion) so we cancelled our planned trip to Breda. But we did have pancakes for breakfast. I spent a quiet day mostly reading, while Howard did a few jobs around the place. In the afternoon we cycled to the local swimming pool and had a nice swim and a hot shower. It was a communal shower so we had to shower in our bathing suits, but it was great anyway. Then home via the supermarket. On Monday we were pleased that they were able to get the propeller off relatively easily to inspect and remove the bearing that needs replacing, and order the new one. Also the hull of the boat was painted with anti-foul and new anodes were installed. The old anodes had to be removed via welding, but we elected to put in bolts so that we can in future just unbolt old ones and bolt on new anodes. We had to disconnect the electricity while the welding was happening. We also agreed to buy a used anchor that was in the yard. It is 110kg and almost new and we paid about a third of the new price. I painted it to match our ship. Howard was very happy to see those grey patches on the hull get painted over. He has also been touching up the blue paint, so Moondance is looking pretty good. On Tuesday we had our AIS certified. As well as all these survey related activities we have been doing some other work. Howard has grinded, sanded and primed the back deck ready for painting with non slip paint, has touched up the paint work around the wheelhouse door and windows, and replaced the door step on the starboard side which had completely rotted out (the port one had been replaced when we bought the boat). We also decided to strip and re-varnish the kitchen doors and drawers, which were grimy from years of use. Unfortunately the first varnish we choose was way too red, so we decided to use a white wash varnish instead. But after stripping off the doors and leaving them outside to dry, we found them flecked with tiny black spots from the work being done in the shipyard, so in the end we have decided to paint them gloss white. Hopefully they will look fine with the frames still in varnished wood. Also I made chutney. This has become an annual ritual as we have been unable to find a reliable source here. On both Tuesday and Wednesday evening at about 9:30pm we had really impressive storms with thunder and lightening and gusty winds. The winds were so strong that they blew things off the wheelhouse. The first night, our herb pots which luckily I hadn't gotten around to re-potting yet. The next night some of our outside dining chairs (you would think we would have learned). The new part was originally expected to arrive on Tuesday, but it finally arrived on Wednesday afternoon. It then had to be sent away to be machined to be exactly the right size for our drive shaft. After a couple of tries they had it ready to go on Thursday afternoon. Then the bearing was fitted to the boat, Howard worked with the people in the shipyard to add a grease nipple for that bearing (in addition to the automatic greaser already in place), repack the stern gland (which had been leaking), pump in about 3 canisters of grease in through the new grease nipple, and then they refitted the propeller and welded it in place. So finally we were ready to go into the water on Friday morning at 8am sharp.
2 Comments
Geoff McDonald
7/6/2019 02:51:52 am
Love hearing about your adventures.
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Hazel Toulmin
8/6/2019 11:40:31 pm
Wow looks amazing. Must have been a challenge living on it during all that work!! Happy travels xx
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