How to Pass Time in the Boatyard

Oof, am I ever overdue to update this blog. It was a busy few months in the boatyard - but the good news is that Iria's now back in the water, off the dock, and has completed the first few sails of the new shakedown period. But more on that later.

The boat was hauled out around May 22nd, and undergoing refit from then until splashing on September 21st. So, about 4 months stuck in Coomera, about 3 of those being for the rudder repair, and another 1-ish for other projects and repairs on the list.

In no particular order, if you're stuck in Coomera waiting on a rudder to be repaired, here's some other fun things you can do to help pass the time:

• Pull the mast for a repaint, top-to-bottom inspection, and replacement of the masthead wind sensor and lightning rod.
• Rig a removable inner forestay.
• Add a coin under the mast, for luck.
• Put the mast back up.
• Use epoxy filler to touch up some dings and gouges around the boat.
• Color-match the topsides paint in several areas, and touch those up too. (this is one line but it was a huge multi-part project.
• Pull the folding propeller, touch up the anti-foul on the saildrive leg, and re-do the foul-release paint on the propeller.
• Replace the tall, narrow holding tank with a short, wide one so less of it's below the waterline.
• Break the transmission's shifter bracket while installing said new holding tank, and fabricate a whole new one out of aluminum scraps.
• Replace the running backstay blocks with ones that won't fall apart when covered in salt water.
• Replace the bowsprit tackline blocks with low-friction rings and splice a new soft-shackle to replace the old tack block.
• Mount the watermaker.
• Mount the big inverter.
• Re-seal all the beam seals, and the seals where the beams and outer hulls attach.
• Check, replace as needed, and re-tighten the bolts that attach the beams to the main hull.
• Fill in the damage to the stern area with epoxy filler.
• Prepare a new antenna wire for the HF (SSB) radio.
• Fix the alternator wiring so it can actually charge the house bank if needed.
• Pull the entire floor over the battery compartment in the nav station / galley area, build a new one out of fiberglass, flax fiber, and foam core. It'll take about a week of work, but it weighs half as much and won't rot like the old plywood floor.
• Pull the plywood bulkhead that separate the main cabin from the head & engine compartment area, and build a new one out of fiberglass, flax fiber, and foam core. It'll also take about a week of work, but now your bulkhead isn't rotting apart.
• Pull the whole galley apart, replace the rotting plywood supports with fiberglass and foam core (seeing a theme here yet?), and do a minor redesign of the drawers and storage compartments. It'll weigh a little less, won't be rotting apart, and now your galley actually holds all the galley-stuff. Bonus: design new dedicated cutting-board and stove-lighter storage!
• Remove some old, unused wire-passthroughs from the stern, and fill in those old holes with epoxy filler.
• Build an escape hatch mosquito-screen with fiberglass frame from scratch, for more airflow and fewer bugs at anchor.
• Speaking of the escape hatch, fix the broken latch and friction-hinge so it stays securely closed and can be propped open at anchor.
• Replace the old pair of ~150w solar panels with brand new 200w panels.
• Add new 50w solar panels to the outer hulls.
• Wire and test the new solar panels, and enjoy an almost 2x increase in charging speed & power.
• Replace two broken bilge-pumps in the starboard outer hull. Wash out both outer hull storage areas to get the fiberglass dust cleared out from when the new hatches were installed.
• Pull everything out of the boat. Weigh all of it. Give away about 150lbs of spare gear, stuff you don't ever use, and parts for projects you ended up not doing.
• Raise the waterline about 4 inches all around, after scraping a small but thriving civilization of barnacles off the hulls.
• Replace the broken turning blocks on the bows of the outer hulls with new blocks. They broke from a combination of age, time in the sun, and being used to tow the boat ~160 miles.
• Accumulate about a week's worth of free coffee loyalty cards from the yard cafes. Give them to the folks who did your rudder repair work.
• Test out a new way to route the anchor rode. It won't work, but it'll give you some ideas for what might, to help keep weight out of the bow.
• Get a folding bike or two. Give one away because there's nowhere to stow it safely.
• Get a sewing machine, and make "nightstand" soft-storage bags for the berths. (all credit goes to my professional-tailor crew for that one)
• Rework how stove fuel gets stowed so you can carry 3x more fuel, more safely.
• Touch up some patches of non-skid that were flaking off.
• Get measured & quoted for shiny new sails.
• Hose-test all the new hatches to see where they're leaking.
• Re-seal the mast wiring pass-through area, and clean up some of the interior wiring runs for the mast electronics.
• Mount the new rudder, new rudder brackets, and re-paint and re-antifoul all of that.
• Mark the daggerboard at both fully-up and rudder-depth settings.
• Add a shiny holographic nautical star to the tip of the bowspirt, for a neo-traditional look. Re-seal the bowsprit fittings while you're out there.
• Patch up a torn hatch seal. Add some vaseline to the other hatch seals to help the rubber stay flexible.
• Re-seal the engine access hatch that leaked every time water got near it.
• Add backup steering cables to the steering assembly.
• Make soft-hanks for the staysail and attach them before re-stowing that sail.
• Strip the outer few feet of the screacher sheets, to save that little bit of light-air weight on the lines. Splice eyes in them, and soft-shackle to the screacher.
• Finally re-launch the boat, wash the yard-gross off of every exposed surface, and refill the water tank.
• Get out of there and go sailing.

It was a long 4 months, but wow did a lot of work get done! Some of it was easy, some of it was really hard, and some of it was a bit of both at different stages. But it all feels really good to have done. My long "someday" to-do list on the boat is now about 1/4 the length it was back in May, and lots of upgrades got done in the interim. And the above is just what got done in the yard - there's still a bit to do now that the rudder's passed a few days' of sailing shakedown, and I'm on a dock for the next couple weeks to get that work done.

No pictures this time, but maybe I'll add some later. Just want to get an update out since it's been approximately forever.