The end of week two has arrived all too rapidly and has reminded us of the pressure we are under to get all of the work done before departing. The weather has remained a major challenge for the refurbishment plan, delaying work on deck and preventing the boatyard from carrying out some vital work that is required before launching. We had hoped to have the boat in the water by my birthday on the 25th April but this is clearly not going to happen unless a miracle occurs during one night this week! We have made some good progress this week; we are changing the boat from being a land-based reef supporting a vast ecological system (with massive spiders!) into a water-based floating environment to sustain only two biological units... So, a quick summary of what we have been up to. I started the week with a simple job to grease the through-hull seacocks ready for launching. There are ten seacocks on Quasar IV and the whole job should have taken about two hours maximum. The first one was fine in the forward heads but then number two....36 hours later, half a can of WD40, and hundreds of taps with a large hammer finally released the fitting which appeared fine and showed no real reason for seizing. Anyway, it’s now back in action, good as new. The old toilet, sink taps and shower unit have been removed leaving space for me to carry out the final part of this job, the replacement of all of the associated plumbing, a very messy, smelly and time-consuming task that is on the list for this coming week. The Johnson shower pump was also seized and required a total strip-down, new impeller and reassemble to get operational once again. And yes, it is still as noisy as it was before! With all of this work going on in the forward heads, this space is no longer available as a storage area so the entire contents had to be transferred to the forward cabin...specifically onto my bunk. I am therefore now living out of the passage berth, Tracey in the remaining half of the forward cabin until I complete the plumbing this week. Tuesday evening was ‘break night’ in Gosport with Mark T – some excellent beer in The Clarence Pub, followed by a superb curry in the New Bengal Indian Restaurant. Returning to the boat on Wednesday morning via the Marine Superstore in Port Solent left my bank account another £330 lighter following the purchase of many small items to complete the smaller jobs. As my cousin Paul once said to me “B.O.A.T stands for Break Out Another Thousand”!!! Wednesday was really notable this week – the sun finally came out and it stopped raining allowing Tracey to keep chipping away at the cockpit seating with a set of chisels. The existing 30 year old teak-faced plywood has had it and we are replacing all of the seats with a material called Flexi-Teak, a synthetic material that looks a bit like teak, with ageing effect, but lasts longer and is half the price. It is also engine oil and red wine resistant, but that is not why we are buying it...honestly. The kind offer of a small fan heater by our boatie neighbour was greatly appreciated as watching a film on the laptop when it is 8 DegC in the saloon in the evening was becoming a bit of a drag to say the least. We discovered today however that we have actually been plugged into someone else’s electricity supply for the past five days...oops! Still, mains power gave us the opportunity to jet wash the deck on Thursday which took all day and has left Quasar IV looking much better. I have finally completed re-wiring the battery compartment, engine start system and the alternator/solar/wind charging systems which has taken me about four days this week. It is not quite finished due to a shortage of the really thick 170Amp wire, but almost there, and has given enough ‘safe’ 12Volt power to test the HF Radio and Pactor modem which allows us to talk to people when hundreds of miles offshore as well as getting essential weather reports/updates and reporting our position daily for viewing via the web. We still have no decent cooker installed but we do have two new teak mounting blocks ready to go kindly made for us by Paul here in the boatyard from some off-cuts. It rained all day Friday yet again but Tracey managed to get a request for us on Solent Radio which came as a surprise to me whilst eating lunch with the radio on! The Maypole Pub on Friday night provided our deserts, clearly to save the need for washing up unnecessary dishes on the boat.....That’s it for this week.