Christmassy

We have started the day of Christmas Eve with a cold frigid shower on the deck. Taking a shower the day before was just unbearable. You might not believe it, but the temperature dropped to non-tropical 14° C. Yes, that’s right. And it started to blow hard too. Regular tropical blizzard. We even had to put on our socks and long sleeves. Yuk. Taking a shower in that weather defied our collective common sense. We Bohemians have a saying: cleanliness is half the health, dirtiness is the whole health. Preventive medicine, you know.

Christmassy photo gone wrong

Already the day before X-mass brought us a Christmassy gratification in the form of a sudden rain squall, which started to pound at our newly re-bedded portlights with the help of a ferocious wind. It was trying hard to get in, but succeed did it not. Not a drop. Our portlights are officially leaking no more. Till… well that’s a tale of the future days.

This event certainly did uplift our spirits, which were, due to the bad weather, little low. The whole week the sun scorching hot, must have been at least 25° C during the day. Just the day before, I jumped into the water to scrape tube worms and barnacles from our three year old antifouling and the water was just wonderful. And suddenly the temperature dropped by ten degrees. The second half of Janna‘s hull will have to wait till the weather is back to tropical winter. Then we set out for a few sea trials.

Our current plan is to leave for the Philippines in mid-January. Until then, we would like to finish a dodger, which will greatly improve our creature comfort, and new nonskid.

In fact it turns out, that the luck has been with us all time long. Not only have we plenty of interesting work, but by staying in Taiwan longer than we originally planned we have dodged one late season typhoon two weeks ago and right now we are avoiding another low system that is passing through the south of Philippines, the very destination we would be aiming for. So the timing, though belated in comparison with the original plan, seems just fine. In the meantime we’ll have chance to finish projects we wanted to do later and will be able to enjoy the Philippines to the fullest.

Last but not least, few pics from our continuing effort to make Janna yet more comfortable.

We have finished re-sealing of our cockpit teak.

Spreading Sikaflex, a.k.a. “black death”

We replaced old acrylic lens on our main hatch. After reading some notes on working with acrylic, I was real worried about cracking it, but it turned out quite well.

Drilled and sanded

Sealed

New Gusher 10 has been stored in the boat for a while now, because we could not make our mind where to lead the 1½” hoses. But the confined space of our boat decided for us.

Painful drilling of the boat’s hull

Clean well and seal with Sikaflex

Debilitating struggle with a big hose in a constricted space

Our dingy is equipped not only with oars, but also with mast, boom, rudder and dagger-board. We set out to tie all that to the dinghy so that in case of emergency we could drop the dinghy to the water and jump in. The mast and the rudder are secured next to the keel of the dinghy. The yellow float add the buoyancy and so do four fenders that we tie to the topsides of the dinghy.

Our great Walker Bay 8 with all it’s equipment