December 22, 2020
Well time has come for Happy Days to get a new coat of paint! Boats normally need to be taken out of the water and get painted with fresh antifouling once a year. The antifouling is the paint that helps to keep all the small marine life getting attached to the boat.
Originally the plan was to do the antifouling in Colombia back in May, but as we all know COVID came to disrupt everyone’s plans. Therefore, it is now December and poor Happy Days has not been painted.
At some point we looked into taking the boat out of the water in Curacao or Bonaire, but we had an extra issue to take care of. Since we left from Antigua to Martinique back in July, we started to have small noise with the engine. Not very loud at the beginning it grew louder on the crossing. We discovered the oil on the engine had changed colour clear indication that we had some water coming in. Apparently, it is very common problem. Later, thinking back, we concluded the caused could have been some sort of fishing net we caught at night when sailing in front of Guadalupe. That night we were sailing but lost some speed but we though it was current against but after we went back and forth couple of times and recovered the speed. It was definitely something that got caught in the propeller . We managed to get it loose afterwards but apparently not without damages. In any case, the only way to fix this problem, was to take the boat out of the water and change the saildrive seals. So from that moment we started thinking it was time to get the boat out of the water, change the seals and do the antifouling all at once.
Finding the proper parts proved to be almost mission impossible. Volvo -the engine’s brand – does not provide support or info to individuals. They only talk to authorised dealers. Neither Curacao nor Bonaire dealers gave us a confident answer. They gave us estimated times of 6 to 8 weeks for the parts to arrive. And they were not even sure if they could get them. However, Aruba had the part on stock. So we thought we could go to Aruba and get everything done there. Remember, back in May when everybody was going south to Grenada for the hurricane season, we thought we would go to Antigua for a little and then straight to Aruba to be saved from the hurricanes. That never happened because Aruba’s COVID cases exploited and still have not come down. In addition, procedures to go there are still unclear and include sone sort of quarantine.
After all this back and forth, we managed to get the boat out of the water in Colombia and to get the engine fixed. Which is a full story all along.
Which Ship yard?
Once we arrived in Santa Marta marina, we got in contact with the Operations Manager. Great service, quick response, they study al the options, gave us an estimate and we were ready to go. Happy Days was going to get its coat of pain and new saildrive seals while we were visiting family in Colombia. What a great plan… There was only a small detailed the Operations Manager forgot to tell us. They had construction work planned on the “Dock” so we had to pull the boat out of the water and do all the works to put it back in the water before December 16. Or we could leave the boat and start the works on January 12 when the dock will be repaired.
None of the of the options were attractive. The risk of doing the works before the 16 was too high, if anything was delayed we would have to put the boat in the water before finishing the works or leave it until after the repairs were completed. Weather could also extend the time of the civil works. And who knows what else? What if they don’t finish January 12? Too many unknowns.
I was really happy to be in Santa Martha, they had less COVID cases, the marina is really nice and doing the works there seemed a great idea. But there we were changing plans again. Some sailors removed that word from their vocabulary. No more planning on Covid times. Anyway, I started to look for options in Cartagena. Ten years ago Fabian and Carlos bought our boat “Thira”. Fabian is from Cartagena, he has lots of experience and contacts around boats, so I called him and he said he could definitely help us . So we decided to go there.
In the mean time, talking with my dad, he agreed to come to Santa Martha to visit us for a few days. When we talked, I mentioned the possibility to sail around Santa Martha a bit. But now it was different, a bit of sailing plus a 24hr sail from Santa Martha to Cartagena. (I wrote a full post about my dad’s visit. Look here).
Once in Cartagena, Fabian helped us sort out almost everything in a day. Unbelievable!! I had been calling, marinas and shipyards with very slow or no response at all. But with him, it was completely the opposite. He knows everybody, he has been working with boats in Cartagena for years. So we scheduled Happy Days to go out of the water on the 18th at Todomar. They had an experience mechanic which was going to take care of the engine repaired. That’s a full other story …
Seeing that Cedric and Happy Days had a plan to be out of the water to do the antifouling and repaired the engine. I decided it was time for a bit of “land time” so I flew out of Cartagena with my dad.
Get ready, set, go!
Taking the boat out of the water is always tricky. There are lot of small details that need to be taken care to avoid any problem that can go from small to big really quickly. So that’s why Cedric stayed all the way. He already had Happy Days out of the water once in Spain before we bought it.
Once the boat was out of the water, Cedric found a nice surprise!!!
On the picture above, you see a blue boat on the left side. That boat is “Thira” I would have never imagine to have “our” two boats on the same picture. It was such a nice surprise to see “Thira”, so many miles we shared and so many memories. The sad part is that Thira wasn’t there getting a new coat. She is actually there because it now belongs to the nation. The latest owner bought it from Carlos and Fabian but never pay all the fees and papers to change the ownership. Therefore, the boat has been confiscated for sometime now and nobody is looking after her. Hopefully, she gets to get a new owner soon that will take care of her as she has been a great boat since 1998. She is only missing the Panama Canal to complete a tour around the world!
On the sailing world there are a lot of superstitions. One of them says that is is bad luck to change a boat’s name. May be that’s what happened!!!
Engine repair
“After month managing our sail drive, we can finally fix it. Motoring Slowly or not motoring at all were options used over the past few months. Even before we reached the Shipyard, they knew we needed the repairs so they quoted us a slightly expensive repair. Once the boat is out of the water, not much you can do isn’t it. I agreed and here we have 3 young guys working for the chief mechanic for about 1h or so, they patiently removed every part starting from the properler to the axis within the Sail drive. Really happy with their work, I decide to follow them to the workshop to see if they can find the seals that need replacement and to see for the 1st time the inside of a sail drive Shaft.
What a nasty shock when I find them with our Aluminium seal holder stuck in the vice and one of the guy hammering the seal out with a screw driver…. THAT’S a NO NO NO…. This was so bad, in fact, that it was almost pointless to get angry (Still gave them an earfull in Spanish, English and French). By then the damaged was done. Called the chief mechanic, which did not really want to admit anything, so here we go straight to the shipyard manager. A nice old spanish guy with years of experience in shipyard. As soon as I explained, he stayed very composed explaining that mistakes happens. They are generally easy to fix. They have great access to machine shop …. All the usual “bla bla bla” to calm an angry customer. He calls in the mechanic that coincidently forgot to bring the damaged piece with him. But I insisted quite a bit until the parts were brought to the office. At that point, it was the turn of the nice and quiet manager to lose it. “This is plain Stupid behaviour ?? Since when do we hammer anything out ??? ” And so on.
With a few days to Christmas and the weekend coming, the pressure was on. I was already planning to leave the boat out of the water, order the part from the US and coming back in the new year to get it fix. That is without counting on Colombian creativity. So on the Saturday, they called a few shops but this aluminium body part is very specific. So the chief mechanic took the Saturday afternoon to go to another shipyard (more like a boat graveyard) and dismounted no less than 5 sail drive to find the same part. Then they put it in place and finally the saildrive was repaired. Amazing work by Charly, chief mechanic of FerroAlquimar. ” by Cedric”
Antifouling
The antifouling is the paint used for the hull to prevent the organisms to get attached and caused damage. So as I said before this needs to get done every year. Look at the pictures, some like animals have really got attached to the hull!!
To start the hull needs to get clean as much as possible with some high pressure pump
The next step is to sand the hull, that is when you think, this boat is really big
After apply the primer paint all the way starting with the keel. In our case, as we applied the same type of antifouling, we did not really need to do it except in the places without any antifouling left. like the keel.
Then apply all the antifouling paint all the way
Tere is a tricky part when the boat needs to be lifted to move all the supports and paint under the spaces were the support were. Thanks a lot Fabian for an amazing work.
Now Happy Days is ready to go in the water and this time Cedric will be inside the boat. Normally, you stay outside they put the boat in the water and then you go in. Not really sure why, but at this Varadero is the opposite.
It was December 22, 2020 already 4pm when Happy Days got in the water, so it was actually too late to get inside the marina in Cartagena. So the plan was to anchor outside wait until next morning and get Happy Days safely in the marina. All that before 2pm for Cedric to take his flight to Bogota. Everything had to work timely so Cedric could get to Bogota for Christmas.
Happy Days 