Splash Down

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Tue 20 Apr 2010 19:05
Monday 19th & Tuesday 20th April

Monday 19th
Mad scramble to get finished in time with the additional complication of the boys from Demir Marine fitting out solar panel arch on the stern at the same time. This was fun to watch although not particularly easy on the nerves of someone like me with no head for heights! The concept of Health and Safety has not filtered through to the workforce in Turkey, so the spectacle is fairly exciting. The process of lifting the gantry onto the back of Serafina alone was worthy of a short film as they clambered dangerously all over the back of the boat with the use of just one ladder and a lot of bravery or luck. The one photo I really regret not getting was when three of the guys needed to make an adjustment to one of the fittings and this required angle grinding the weld and changing the angle before re-welding it. The grinding involved the three of them perched on top of the gantry which is on the back of the boat so they were some 20 ft up in the air. None of them had any protective gear at all as the cutter showered them all in red hot fillings. Mind you at the same time the boat behind us was being sanded by fellows who also had just basic paper mouth and nose masks only, so their faces and eyes were thick with the dust of the toxic antifouling paint that they were removing!

Happily all went well and they finished the welding of all the stainless steel on Serafina around 8.00pm as it became too dark to continue anyway. We had had the props that are holding us up moved in the afternoon so we could paint with anti-fouling the patches that the props had covered before. This meant me trying to apply the paint after dark using just the street lighting. Sarah returned from the showers and felt that it looked like I had got more paint on the boat than myself, but it might have been a close contest!

Tuesday 20th
Up at 6.00am to get a second coat of anti-fouling paint onto the patches and make sure that these did not spoil all of Sarah?s superb earlier work in painting the bottom. Sarah herself also rose and used the time waiting for the travel hoist to borrow some high trestles and a plank and polish pretty much the entire hull. Demir's men returned to polish the new welds and they also had to modify the guard rails and various other bits, but the end result is just perfect. We are so pleased that we choose to get them to incorporate the gantry with the existing steelwork so it really looks as if it was all designed for the boat from new, rather than something that has been just bolted on. In the end we did not get launched until 5.00pm and after persuading the marineros that we did not want to go in the mooring they were offering us alongside the 300 ton travel lift, we were directed to a very tight spot between a 54ft French flagged Amel and a 50+ ft aluminium Omni. Sarah then set about washing the entire deck whilst I leathered it dry behind her so at last we have a moderately clean boat!

Early supper and retired exhausted to bed at 10.00pm.