Bonjour all!,
OK so we have been at the boat for almost 2 weeks and are enjoying the Rose’ and daily swims. Progress on the boat is at the now-familiar French pace and we feel fortunate to have had some of our list completed. The starboard electric winch has been fixed as this wasn’t working when we showed up, apparently an issue with the “Brain/ box” which Harken has had some trouble with. They also need to install a breaker for the electric winch system as currently there is only a fuse. The AC ran for 1 minute the first night and remains “offline” and there is a very slim possibility that this will get sorted before we sail and at this point it is on our “B” list..although it would have been nice for sleeping as it was in the 90’s that first week. They got the freezer running again once a relay switch was replaced (our schematic for wiring is way off with the breaker in a different position and no relay switch noted, so that was a bit baffling but the mechanic had worked on lot’s of different vintage Catana’s and figured it out).We had the small back up Inverter sorted, and are waiting for them to put a larger breaker and correct gauge wire in for the 3000W main Inverter. (The current breaker is only for a 1600W Inverter, go figure!) They did switch out the code Zero drum for the correct one, repaint a section of window that’d had some spillage on it (didn’t care), and resealed a section of hull /deck fitting that we noticed was missing the Sikaflex too, which should help keep us water tight.
The 2 biggies are the anchor windlass which needs a larger sized gypsy and roller, as currently it will skip so badly that you are basically pulling up 1 link at a time very slowly, so this is a real safety issue. The other issue of concern that we are waiting for a Volvo mechanic to check, is that the starboard engine has a “hot” coolant tank (10 degree’s warmer than the port engine), and the alternator is quite corroded, this while the engine hasn’t really been running yet. It only has 7.9 hrs on it so this seems weird..Oh, the port engine has only 0.6hrs on it and when we asked about that, we were told that apparently there was a”brain malfunction” which caused the port engine to start by itself so they had Volvo change that out before we got here which was thoughtful.
While we wait we are tackling the little things like re-bedding the main sheet pad eyes which were installed in the wrong direction, tightening the lifelines, cleaning up the engine rooms, gradually labeling various hoses and wires (lots of mystery on this front), hoisting and washing the main sail, bending on the jib, adding hardware here and there, cleaning the dinghy and running up the dinghy engine (found a leaky connection due to a bad O ring), tweaking the safety straps for the dinghy, splicing lines, organizing lockers and starting to provision again, and making a master list of boat equipment with serial numbers which we need for clearing customs I guess.
Fun has been had reading cruising guides and charts trying to pick a course when we finally leave the dock, which is still either coastal Spain and the Balearic’s or up to the islands off Toulon and over to Corsica. We have yet to start the engines due to the afore-mentioned issue, run the water maker (as we don’t want to un-pickle it here and have to run it in the harbor until we leave which we hope is in the next 2 weeks..), or run the generator which we plan on doing tomorrow. Todd will check out the rig tomorrow too.
There are a few boats here that wait with us, a 65 foot refit with Hawaiian owners and a 47 foot semi-refit with English owners, and they are having their first Catana experience. They are not as seasoned as us, and it is like hearing an echo when they retell how they have tried befriending, cajoling, threatening, showing by example by doing the work themselves, and that they have discovered that they need to be present to check the work as it is occurring. We are surprisingly sanguine now and instead of the indeterminable waiting, we just do our own thing and thus when they don’t show up we haven’t sat around stewing over it. The 65 footer is about a month and a half
behind schedule, and Dave the owner says that the factory is helping get him a year visa extension which would be an amazing feat. We had everyone over last night for a “Catana yacht club” meet and greet which started slowly enough but culminated with a drunken dingy trip over to a local bar for wild dancing and a very slow motion tip into the piss by a Canadian Doug as he reached for a wayward flip flop. (Doug and his wife Sandy have just gotten a used Privilege 49, not through Catana though, and we saw their flag so invited them along).
It was a fun night and everyone needed to vent and blow off some steam.