Apr 21

Apr 21 Turkish delight

The reason for this trip was a haircut......no serious, Lifgun went on the hard few weeks ago and I agreed with yachtworks (the shipyard at Didim) that I will be there when the new sails from Elvstroem Denmark arrived. However - in the meantime we also decided to replace the whole ruder because the stainless rudder shaft was somehow corroded and all bearings in the quadrant have been massive blocked, literally they were completely destroyed. But okay - let's start from the beginning, best with a list of the executed works :

a.) New Mainsail, self tacking jib and blue water runner ordered at Elvstrom, for everybody who never shipped something to turkey - I tell you....this is something which is really difficult. Therefore the new rudder was also shipped with the very professional help of Michael from the Elvstrom shipping department. However, due the fact that Lifgun is a Vessel in transit, the idea was not to pay VAT - which is not so easy - but worked at the end. The sails and the rudder arrived on Thursday 13.30 local time, together with 3 officials from the customs and a sealed truck. Under the eyes of the customs the seal get broken and some official paperwork took place. And here again, whatever you do, the most important thing on a boat is a stamp. After stamping several docs the office drove back to Kusadasi (which is 2 hours away) and the guys from Yachtworks started to treat the rudder with in total 7 or 8 layers of paint.

Beside this major rudder issue we did the following other works : refurbishing the cockpit table, enlarge the raymarine network, fixed all the reeling poles, install an open network for to display raymarine data in open source apps, antifouling, fixing the keel, polishing everything, refurbished the freezer compressor, replacing joints, servicing the engine and the genset and and and....

Enlarge raynet and servicing the engine.....

After a week with lot of work, Lifgun kissed the water on Friday morning again... like new and ready to sail. Hopefully the next posts will be from new sailing adventures again..... Thank's to Yachtworks for there professional help and work, Emre did a great job !