Is it just me or have the last few months been tough for everybody? Lately every new email seems to express regrets over lapsed communication and shares stories about months of challenges that just don't seem to let up. Even those sailors lucky to be off enjoying the cruising life in the Med have had their share of troubles. Just take a look at
Aisling's Blog and read about the sudden storm that surprised sailors in the Ionian sea. While our trouble's certainly are small next those sailors who weren't so lucky in Lefkada, this has been a challenging summer for Manny and me too.
It all started out well when in early June we took some friend's out sailing for the weekend. We sailed along the coast, fished a little and moored out for the night. The weather was wonderful. We ate well, swam often and slept under the stars. All too soon it was time to sail home. When we arrived back at the dock, I took one look at their long faces and quickly understood the heavy feeling of having to go back and face the rat race. "Look", I said "we're thinking of sailing down to Egypt for a few days next week. Do you want to come?"
They were eager. We all began to organize ourselves for a little cruise and then Murphy stepped in. The Egyptian government closed the Taba Heights marina and in one fell swoop put an end to our plans. Maybe we should have been prepared for this what with the fall of Egypt's government last winter, but Taba Heights is the only Port of Entry along Egypt's Sinai coast until Sharam. (And entering in Sharam doesn't make sense. Boats from Eilat would have to sail all the way south to Sharam, enter, then beat all the way north again and then south again to clear out and beat back north AGAIN to come home - a ridiculous procedure that would take a good part of a week to do.).
The thing is that not only did this put a stop to our short cruise, but it meant that taking Yofy up to the Mediterranean was getting to be an ever increasingly good idea, considering all that's going on in this area. And we really do want to sail Yofy in the Med. In fact we really do want to sail Yofy in the Med now!
There are just a couple of things that we need to do before we can cruise in comfort and safety. First off we need to haul Yofy out, inspect her bottom, paint her with antifouling, replace all her thru hulls, seacocks and zincs and check her cutlass bearing. Like most of the sailors in Eilat, we really would rather not do this in the local yard. Not only is the owner gouging boat owners with unbelievably high rates but he is using a rail car; a method that is outdated, and this particular rail car is so unsafe, that it runs chills up your spine just to watch a boat being hauled out.
We had thought we'd found a creative solution when we decided to hire a crane and put Yofy on a trailer. We planned to get our friend Amnon to drive Yofy to his workshop in Eilat's industrial zone where we could do the work in our own time. In fact we had thought we'd do this just after we returned from our sailing vacation in Egypt. But this plan had to be put on the rails too. See my last blog
Constructive Crtiticism
Secondly we needed to replace the cabin sole. Way back in the summer of 2008,
I fell through Yofy's floor into the bilge. At that time Manny had far too many jobs lined up to tackle laying a new cabin sole and so he did some temporary repairs. They've held well but the sole was soft in a number of places and it was clear that a proper repair needed to be done soon.
Just as we began to wail about all these obstacles, Manny got a phone call from
an acquaintance living in the north who had just bought a new boat. Would we like to go sailing? Would we like to go sailing for a month? Delighted with a new solution to what was fast looking like a summer of work, we quickly affirmed that we were available. Out came the pilot book for Greece and the provisioning lists. Then it was suggested that Ellen needed a haul out and perhaps we should take her to Greece. Maybe we would go sailing for a month and then come back and take Ellen to Greece for a haul out.
Things were really looking good now.
But our acquaintance pushed back his date for a sailing holiday to August and the owner of Ellen began to waffle about haul out dates. Time was sifting through our hands. We decided to tackle one of the jobs that needed to be done on Yofy and Manny chose to replace the cabin sole.
"It will only take a couple of weeks. I've already worked out the quirks in the job with the
work I did on Hermakis" he said.
And since we were on a roll, he decided to make a new salon table that would both swing to one side so we could access lockers more easily and lower into a double bed for guests. If we were in for the penny we might as well be in for the pound.
So at the beginning of July we packed up the contents of Yofy's salon, removed all her cushion covers, stored the foam in the V berth and moved into a small studio apartment. Within a day or two Manny had ripped out the old floor and we were committed.
Days he would work away on Yofy while I sat in the apartment going through boxes of things we had stored on Yofy, throwing out what wasn't needed. Evenings I would come down to the boat and help with whatever I could. We worked late into the night hoping to finish this job before August.
After ripping out the old floor, Manny began to look at the supporting beams and to replace any that were rotted. Day after day he found more and more soft wood. In the end he replaced all eight supporting beams. Then the battery locker needed to be replaced as well. As soon as he took out the battery locker he found that the shower well from the head also needed replacing.
With no end in sight, this was becoming a depressing job and our dreams of summer sailing were quickly slipping away. There was nothing to do but push on and finally the last week of July; Manny slowly he began to reassemble everything.
The beginning of August found Manny ordering the oak planking and still our phone hadn't rung. We intensified our work schedule. With a big push Manny laid the last oak plank and seamed everything with silicone. It was now mid August and apparent that our sailing friend was never going to get it together to go sailing. Frustrated and exhausted from what had turned out to be a summer of renovations, we booked last minute plane tickets and flew to Greece. Sometimes you just have to accept what's on your plate.
Early September, we returned rested and ready to continue with the project. Manny is still finishing up the last bits of trim work and I must say he did a great job. Let me tell you though, if anybody had told us that we would move off of Yofy and spend our summer doing a huge renovation project, we would have told them they were nuts.
As Mark Twian said "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."