There is a tongue in cheek saying about cruising: "It is working on your boat in exotic places". Unfortunately, it is not so tongue in cheek many times. This is especially true during the start of each cruising season or after a major ocean passage. It is important to keep on top of every little thing that has or could go wrong so that it does not become a major problem later. With one major exception, that has been our mantra since we have had Leu Cat. The one excepiont was during 2015 when we had finished our Indian Ocean retrofit and started crossing the Atlantic Ocean. During that passage several things that we so heavily relied on failed, making what would have been a wonderful crossing a pure nightmare. It was at that time we discovered that things that are "maintenance free" on a boat, are like things that are "maintenance free" on a car. Specifically, such things have a shelf life and it is best to replace them before that shelf life expires even though they are functioning well.

We had a series of failures that we just did not anticipate. These included failures of our 8-year-old battery charger, our 9-year old headsail furler, our spinnaker head block, the rudder pin on the port quadrant and the radar. We never had any clue that these items were failing until they all failed during that long and frustrating crossing.

That passage and those failures are all but a distant past now, but they are reminder to keep ever vigilant on every item that we have on Leu Cat. Now don't get me wrong, I am not so naïve to think that we will not have future equipment failures or problems during major passages. Long ocean passages are hard on a boat and something always fails. It is just during that Atlantic crossing so many major items failed and they impacted other items on the boat. In fact, whenever we get together with other cruisers who have just made a crossing, we all tell our war stories of what failed and how we dealt with such failures out in the middle of the ocean. This is what differentiates blue water cruisers from those who stay in one general area and are never far away from a service center. We really know our respective boats and can generally make due with creative solutions until we reach a place where something can be replaced or repaired.

Today was the start of the work we had planned on doing after cruising up and down the West Indies last year. Last November, before we returned to the States for the holidays, I had instructed the manager of Spice Island Marina to have his people do our annual maintenance on our engines and saildrives, the generator and to scrape the old paint off the hulls so the new hull paint could be applied once we returned.

Unfortunately, when I arrived at the marina this morning, I discovered that the manager had been let go due to a difference of opinion with management and that nothing had been done. Grrrrr! On the positive side, the yard supervisor was very understanding and he hustled several of his workers over to Leu Cat to start work on our boat. Thus, today two engine mechanics came over, along with the fellow who is working on installing our new emergency hatch. While they started their work, I spent the day working on the first phase of replacing our windlass, cutting the new gasket for the emergency hatch and a sundry of other minor items that are on my list. Right now, I would say that we have a fifty-fifty chance of making our schedule to return Leu Cat to the water by this Friday. The off again/on again rain we had today delayed the work on the hulls.

It will be interesting to see if we can make our schedule since we have very little leeway in the scheduled work.

The photo for this blog is of Leu Cat being hauled out here at Spice Island Marine last November.