Gosport 14/11
Since our last update here we have been what you can say; full of ourselves..! Well, we have been that on our long trip with Cubaneren too, but having purchased a “new” boat and planning the next years of our lives has taken up a lot of our capacity.
We left Trondheim in our “new” car, a Mitsubishi Grandis. That purchase was of course celebrated with a Grandis (pizza) for lunch. Since it was more than 16 months since last time we had that for a meal it was quite OK. On our way south, we visited friends and family, nice to be back too.
We stayed for 5 days in Åsgårdstrand before we continued south. By now we had emptied the car for seats and filled it up with things. Heaters, warm clothes, rigging gear, bicycles etc.
We stopped at the Elvstrøm sail loft in Aabenraa. Nice to be back there and see the great development, positive people and great sails. There is big possibilities that Aabenraa will be our home harbor through the winter…
After some more hours in the car and a trip on a ferry we were back in Gosport. Last time we were here it was just to figure out what to order of bits and pieces, and now was the time to start the job to make Octopus our home. It is overwhelming what this boat has got room for. We have found some treasures on the way, but we have also made the boat a lot lighter!
We have been working on installing two 4 kW diesel heaters, taking out 4 toilets and installing 2 new, cleaning toilet tanks, rebuilding the toilet tank system and plan how we want to use the rooms on board.
Today we were lifted out of the water. We test started the engines yesterday, today only the port engine started as the starter motor on the starboard engine broke down. It was very light winds, so we got over to the lifting dock with one engine. We almost filled the dock (75 cm margin on both sides), but we still did not look extraordinary big in the 180-ton travel lift. On the program for the next week is; Changing thru hulls, antifouling, sail drive service, change to folding propellers, some polishing and other things.
