After an incredibly bad run with weather, to hot, to wet, to windy to ... we are nearing completion of the maintenance effort. The boat has been totally transformed. Every fitting has come off been maintained and reinstalled, the decks have been painted all the timber has been strippd back to bare and varnished. The hull has been stripped to bare metal, primed and painted, propspeed on the propeller and shaft. New anodes, additional anodes added to the keel and hull, new wind depth speed log instruments. Removed the gas storage tanks and make good in the cockpit. Replaced all thru fittings new radio in the nav area, new flooring in the main saloon. The list is almost endless, anyway we near completion and should see Akuna back in the water for next week. It has been a long time coming but she looks and is a lot better now.

Well the maintenance continues, we have had the most incredible bad luck with the weather it has either been raining or to hot to paint. We have lost so many days due to weather but there is not much that can be done about that. The boat has steadily been looking worse and worse as we have been removing fittings, windows, grinding small rust patches removing interior panels to get the fittings off. I just hope we can remember where everything goes as we put the pieces back on.

Finally yesterday we started preparing to put fitting back on, the boat has had all the rust patches cut out, treated, primed and painted, we have made all new rubber seals and will over the next week put everything back on the boat. You can see just from the small patches we have painted how nice the Akuna will look when the decks are all completed.

We are also doing a lot of work on the electrics and instruments and we have sourced new Raymarine instruments and a new radio. These will be going in soon. We have replaced nav lights with LED lights. All in all things are starting to look better. We now hope to be in the water by the end of January, lets keep our finger crossed.

Boy was this more than we expected, what we thought was going to be a two week exercise has turned into a five week saga, with every small thing we started we found more issues and it expanded and expanded. Good lord will it ever be done.

We are fortunate though in getting some good advice from our boat builder and a very knowledgable friend who is refitting his boat next to ours. Things are finally starting to improve and instead of just pulling stuff apart and off the boat we are getting some paint down and preparing to put it back.

If all goes to plan and we get some consistant weather we should be back in the water before year end and ready to enjoy the rest of the summer.

Well its that time of year we finally have been able to get Akuna out of the water and have the maintenance start. The list is long and varied (without mention costly) we are stripping her back to bare metal below the water line and doing a full repaint. New instruments spot blasting the deck and full repaint of the deck, new floor and seats. Solar pannels and an additional house battery.

By the time it is finished we will be spending a lot of money but I am hoping that we will soon be at the point where we just get to a regular yearly style maintenance for a while.

So we pulled the boat out and started removing all the fittings and after three weeks of solid sunshine we get the entire monthly average rainfall in one night. We couldn't believe. The weather window for sandblasting the hull and painting is in two days and we have to have all the fittings off and ready for the guys to do their work, could be a late night tonight.

Another beautiful day out on the bay for cruising around. Light NE breeze flat seeas and plenty of sun. We cruised out for a couple of hours and skirted around the outside of an inter club race. It is a lovely site to see the fleet coming towards you in full color. We kept clear of them but enjoyed the racing atmosphere.

I think the bug is getting me again and we will have to get Akuna out racing, at least for the social races.

Went for a lovely cruise on the Akuna for a few hours. It was really nice to get out on such a great day. Jacqui and Gavin on board, good times. The list of maintenance that needs to be done when we slip Akuna next week is getting longer. Oh well needs to be done.