Dec 17

Dec 17 Shaping her up....

My Lord, after passing the customs in Durban international Airport with 32 kg of spares and only 18 kg of personal stuff and after a long tight sleep, the next day the repair session started. After doing a rough plan with Jacques which is my Lifgun specialist, we started with the engine seals, the sail drive was not waterproof anymore - the sealing have been in my luggage. It turned out that the Spanish guys, who did this procedure last time, not were using original seals - once again the proof that you only should use your one spares. During he was working on the sail drive shaft, I replaced the raw water pump and unpacking my stuff. In the late afternoon the slip wagon arrived and we prepared her for a lift early Saturday morning. At 8 am everybody was in position and the lifting process started. This ist down here a bit different form Europe, the slip wagon only works with manpower, so it takes almost 3 hours to mount the belts and lift her up 5 cm. I had, as long as I sailing her, always a small water ingress, maybe this was coming from a former grounding (Hello to Christian) and finally I decided to rebond the keel. Therefore we lifted her to make the gap between hull and keel as big as possible. Jacques and his workers were cleaning the gap, put primer on and then start sealing with Sika 592. This turned out to be a huge job, this Sika stuff is reacting extremely fast and thats why it's so difficult to handle. I think 4 or 5 people have been working parallel on the keel. At the same time the others were finishing the first coat of antifouling. At 1 pm the mission was accomplished ! In the afternoon they were treating the filler between hull and keel, so that she's ready on early Sunday morning for the second coat of antifouling. Planned launching time is Sunday December 17 at 1500 local time.

X-mas greetings from Richards Bay !