Everything went well
in Canada, Malcolm even did a ski season again at Big White and Dina
picked up a one-year contract. After 18 months, Malcolm
flew to Australia to start getting Good as Gold ready for more
cruising. When he arrived in Bundaberg, he quickly made plans to get
a new coat of bottom paint and have the boat put back in the water.
It has to be said that a lot of dust and dirt can accumulate over 18
months, so there was a lot of cleaning to do inside and out.
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| Getting ready for new paint |
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| All ready for the water with NEW PAINT! |
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| Good as Gold on the dock at Bundaberg Port Marina |
After so many years
of use, the anchor and chain needed to be re-galvanized. This
provides a nice coating of zinc to help prevent corrosion. Malcolm
sent the anchor off to a shop in town, but the chain was too corroded
so we ended up purchasing a new one. The new chain needed to be
marked at various lengths so we would know how much we are putting
out while anchoring. Instead of the usual idea of using colour paint
(which wears off) or cable ties (they break off), it was the perfect
time to try tying on short pieces of coloured, really durable, line.
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| Corroded anchor chain, not worth saving |
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| Coloured spectra lines on the new chain (4 yellow = 40m) |
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| Wow, that anchor looks new! |
By the time Dina
arrived, 4 weeks after Malcolm, the boat was in reasonable living
condition. It was now time to tackle lots of little jobs that needed
to be done, just basic upkeep like any home. Some of these jobs were
simple maintenance items and some were new improvements.
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| Malcolm made this for cleaning the track the headsail slides into. |
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| Time for new fire extinguishers, new flares and a new liferaft (ours was 30 years old) |
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| Malcolm up the mast running some lines. |
Malcolm has ALWAYS
BEEN ANNOYED with the storage space we call “The Pantry”. IT IS
TOO TALL AND NOTHING SITS IN IT PROPERLY!!!!! SO he made some shelves
and Dina painted them. Malcolm has also BEEN ANNOYED BY THE FREEZER
COMPARTMENT for pretty much the same reason, so new shelves were made
for it too. Along the way, Dina’s closet got some shelves.
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| New shelves! |
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| New faucet too |
The only big issue
we had was trying to get the generator started. After lots of
investigation, it looked like we needed to spend a good bit of money
to repair it. We have way more than enough power from our solar
panels, and have almost never used the generator in the 9 years we’ve
owned the boat. So instead of fixing it, we took it out. Now there is
lots of room in the engine compartment to access the various parts of
the engine. There was also room to get at the ceiling and add some
LED lights. These two things pleased us more than getting the
generator running ever would have!
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| So much space without the generator |
