In this episode of Sailing A B Sea we take delivery of our new Zodiac dinghy and Mercury outboard. The courier brings lots of parcels including our DJI Mavic...

Closed Captions (CC):
We're going to start with the small

package and see what's inside there. Oh okay

This tells me that one of the packages

contains the new Mavic Pro drone that

we've ordered, because ah these are spare

propeller blades for drone.

We've ordered quite a lot of packages to come from either the UK, Australia or even the USA

I think everything for the US has now

arrived and last week we received the

VHF radio which is also waterproof and

it floats and also and she received her

ring mandrel which will allow her to

make her Beach jewelry to just the right

size to fit everybody's fingers. This

week we got a big lot of packages. A

little one, a medium-sized one and a big

one so we're just going to open them up

now and see what we've got inside them.

We're going to start with the small

package and see what's inside there. Oh okay this tells me that one of the packages

contains the new Mavic Pro drone that

we've ordered because ah these are

spare propellers blades for the drone. And

now looking at the medium-size package

from the size of it and weight of it

this has got to be the DJI Mavic

Prone drone that we've ordered.

Yes it is! Umm-mm!

So I'm pretty sure that most of you know

what a drone is - it's a flying object

with a built-in camera which will allow

us to take aerial shots and just

basically add a different dimension to

our YouTube videos. We'll do a full

opening of this package a little bit

later on but yeah this is our new

Mavic Pro, very excited about playing with that.

And the big package. I'm hoping that this is

a lot of the stuff I ordered from a UK

marine chandlery, so let's take a look

inside this one and find out what it

contains, It contains a lot of green

popcorn. There's enough popcorn in here to sink

a battleship. Let's take a look at what

we've got first. Ah yeah, this is

definitely this stuff from the marine

chandlery. We'll have a lot of fun popping

that big stuff later, there's lots of big

poppers.

So one of the things we do need in fact

one of several things we do need is this

folding black cone and you might think

well what use is that? Well when we're

actually under sail but not getting

enough wind we need to turn the engine

on and then when you've got your sails

up and your engine on it's called motor

sailing and you have to display this

black cone just forward of the mast to

let other boats know that you are

actually motor sailing. So that is kind

of a legal requirement and also a safety

requirement. On the other side of the

coin you need one of these black circles

that you put up when you're at anchor

and this lets other vessels know that

you're at anchor and therefore you can't

move out of their way, they've got to

move out of your way. Oh yeah...

These are floating walkie-talkies with a 12Km radius over a

straight-line flat surface. The reason

we've got these is when we're scoping

out anchorage positions we don't want to

bring the yacht in so we'll send the

dinghy out with either Aannsha or myself

on it and this way we can communicate

with each other and let each other know

you know where to bring the boat or

where to stay away from. so really good

that we've got those as well as our

regular VHF radio stuff. Oh yes This is

basically a chart plotter-ruler, I guess

you'd call it, but it allows you to put

degrees in and all sorts of stuff

like that on charts. We learnt all about

this or use of this in our RYA Day

Skipper course so we've got to have one

of those for our charts. And these are a very

important piece of safety gear. These are

our Spinlock life vests or life jackets

and the reason why we chose Spinlock was

because Mareike, our instructor down in

Gibraltar used them and she sang highly

of the praises of them, so we've got

these Spinlock life jackets too - one for

Aannsha

and one for me. Another important piece

of safety gear that you hope you're

never going to have to use is the grab

bag. This sits in a handy location

whenever you're under sail or under on a

passage you'll keep all your important

boat documents in here and your

passports.

You'll also keep basic water and food

provisions in here and maybe a VHF radio

and just stuff that if the boat

hits something and starts to sink you

want to grab this grab bag and take off

with all your important and valuable

possessions inside it.

And that is our

loot or booty for today

I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun opening up all this

stuff and playing with it and finding

out just how it works. There's lots more

to come and we'll show you what we've

got as soon as the delivery guy brings

it to us.

I think that is the sound of our chariot

arriving! Well it's not really a chariot,

it's more of a dinghy and an outboard, but

it's going to get us from A to B so let's

go and take a look at it hey

Hey guess what! It's musical beds again! Hahaha! While work is being done on the boat,

access to water tanks and electricity is

under two beds: The Princess Suite - mine

and the spare aft cabin - mine - as in

where I've been sleeping when I can't

get into the Princess Suite. So I've been

moving backwards and forwards a few

times lately. Oh well First World Problem.

Hahaha... I'll just sleep tonight like this - it's easier!

A little bit of a change of scenery

right now - we're just waiting to be

hauled out ready for our antifouling and

replacement of several of the through

holes. So right now we've moved from the

berth we've been sort of staying at for

the last - I don't know - week or so - two weeks and

we're now just waiting for this boat

over here to be cleaned and moved and

then the machine can come back into

position to lift us out and the same

will happen to us and we get to be on

the hard for a probably hopefully three

days.

It's always nerve-racking when they

bring the boat up on the hard but she's

been in good hands. Now she's got to have

a bottom cleaned!

It doesn't pay to be afraid of heights

because now when we want to go in and

out of our home we have to go up and

down these steps!

it's the morning of our first day on the

hard and you can probably hear in the

background a very loud humming vibration

noise. That's the guys down below

starting the whole process by sanding

off the keel. So let's go and take a look

and see what they're doing.

There's Fernando - hahaha - he gets the dirty jobs!

That's our iron keel - first stage of

getting sanded back - obviously quite a

lot of work to do there before it's

ready for antifouling. And more than

likely after speaking to Fernando

yesterday about the surprising state of

the anodes after they have only been in

position for just over two and a half

months. The keel one is not so bad on

this side

but on this side it doesn't really

contact. So basically the anodes get

eaten away and it's not really

providing proper protection for the keel

itself . And also here on the prop shaft

this one here again is very very worn

away from what it was just two and a

half months ago and again Fernando said

that really what needs to be done is

this needs to be taken right back until

it's super super shiny and then a brand

new annode attached really tightly onto

the shiny surface so it makes a really

good electrical connection.

So no doubt that the anodes will be

replaced once everything's been sanded

back.

They tend to back 'em in pretty tight here

at the boatyard. I was hoping

that while we were on the hard I was

going to be able to let out the anchor

and the full length of chain to just see

what condition it was in,

make sure the meterage lengths were

marked. When we drop anchor in the open

water we need to know how much chain

we've got out. But unfortunately Paco,

who's the guy who operates this big

machine, he's parked goes right up to the

one in front of us and there's just

literally no room to drop the anchor and

then we've got this big - looks like a

Beneteau - coming in behind us and again

fairly close parking situation. I'm

literally sitting at the top of the

ladder on the back end of our boat.

I think the guys have progressed really

well today.

Most of the sanding is done and a lot of

the basic priming is done. Still haven't

filled in the opposite side of the

rudder at the bottom here, that's still

got to be done there. There's some basic

sort of coat on the shaft and prop. Got

to fill all this little lots of grease

so that it it does what it does which is

fold. The keel itself is still in

preparation. That's kind of like the first layer

of thick sticky stuff and there'll be a

couple more layers to go on there before

it gets anti-fouled. So she's looking like

a bit of a patchwork quilt at the moment

but I know she looked beautiful when

she's finished.

I've got photos on my phone that I want

to upload onto my website because this

week's blog has got lots of photos that

need to be uploaded. Where we are at the

moment on the hard - we're miles away

from the marina which is over there

which is where we get our free Wi-Fi

signal from. So what I've got to do is

kind of bittersweet. I've got to go and

have a coffee in the marina and take my

laptop and phone and then I can transfer

the photos to my heart's contentat

a really good speed.

The only problem is is that the case

from a laptop is not anywhere inside the

boat as you would expect . No. It's in the

forward locker. But it's not just in the

forward locker, it's in one of the

suitcases, and before I can get to the

suitcase and I don't know which one it

is, I've got to take out everything else

that's on top of it! Mattresses,

sun chairs ... Nothing's easy on a boat. Anyway complaining isn't going to get

the uploading done so this is where I start

to unload the locker.

So I'm on the way to the coffee shop now,

looking forward to having a nice cortado

or cappuccino or something and getting

my photos uploaded.

Here looks like a good

place. Isn't this a great environment to

have a coffee and do some work? Got

my laptop, got free Wi-Fi - ooh and a

cappuccino gracias (De nada) . That looks awesome!

All right let's start working.

Back to

the boat ... (Hola) ... Hola!

We're still experiencing a little bit of wind

here at the moment as you can see from my

hair and possibly hear on the audio but

I just wanted to show you this quickly

One of the things that we're having done

is the metal kind of like thing and

nylon thing that the rudder stock goes

up into in the cockpit of the boat ... When

... when we have the boat inspection

done it was proven to be quite rusty

from what the surveyor could see without

getting full access to it. Well Jose did

say that he would fixed that and what he's

discovered since actually getting full

access to it and taking it out is this...

Now the reason why this - the reason why

this is so rusty is because we're the

emergency tiller hatch opens up just

above it, it was leaking and letting

salt water in and over the 23 years of

the boat's life the salt water has done

this to the metal and that is meant to

be a round hole. Jose has had this new

stainless steel one manufactured with a

new one of these from Jeanneau.

And this is what the new one looks like

As you can see a heck of a lot of

difference there and once again it's

another thing that I'm so glad that

that's been found while we're here in

the in the marina and out on the hard

rather than finding out the hard way

when all of a sudden our rudder fails

and we're a few thousand miles away from

land.

Another job well done.

Next week on Sailing A B Sea our through

holes and sea cocks get replaced, we

modify our light fittings for LED bulbs

and we receive more goodies from the mailman.

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