The past year has seen XII Bar Blues refitted to bring her fully up-to-date and ready for the next decade of sailing.

To make life a bit easier we've fitted a retractable bow thruster (a Sleipner "side power") and an electrification kit to the port halyard winch. The work was carried out by Osmotech of the Hamble who flew one of their technical guys to the South of France to do the installations.

The bow thruster makes all that business of reversing into stern-to moorings in the Mediterranean an altogether less taxing experience and the Andersen electric winch makes easy work of hoisting the mainsail, furling the jib, pulling down reefs and taking the skipper to the top of the mast.

An air conditioning unit in the aft cabin makes for a better night's sleep in the warmth of the Med or tropics and overcomes the limitations of ventilation that these boats otherwise "enjoy".

We've replaced the generator with a new Fischer Panda 5000i and had a bunch of maintenance things done on the main engine. Whilst on the topic of motive power we've also replaced all the standing rigging and the boat now has shiny new rods everywhere.

The most obvious change, however, is that XII Bar Blues is no longer a blue boat and is now resplendent in new white Awlgrip. That with the watermaker overhaul and various pump replacements means that we now have a practically new boat - Oh! and we have a new Rocna anchor to replace the Delta that we've used for years. The Rocna really does seem to set immediately as claimed by its makers but more on this in later postings.