Odin out of dirty dry land

30. November 2010, Tuesday
Position unbekannt


Believe me, if you've been living on a boat for well over three years, it's always a strange feeling when you don't sleep on board but on land.
For days we have been living in a very local hotel, but at least with air conditioning and TV.

Odin is in the shipyard on a regular basis to carry out maintenance work and some repairs that may arise.
The shipyard itself is so dirty and mosquito infested that we prefer to stay in a hotel nearby for the time on land, because the todo list is long:

Repair radar!
Repair electronic navigation plotter!
Repair replacement GPS!
Repair some gelcoat damage!
Repair collision damage to the pulpit!
Have connecting joints for the spinacker trees made of bronze! (the previous material "alu" broke for the third time at higher loads)
Clean underwater hull, sand, prime, treat with sealer, four coats of antifouling and wax and polish hull twice etc.

Since the work here in Colombia is incredibly cheap compared to Western Europe, we allow ourselves the luxury of hiring a team to do the work under our supervision. In addition, it is really too humid and too hot to work here.
However, it is hardly due to the heat that my credit card is starting to glow and my wallet is probably made of onion leather (when I look inside, tears come to my eyes ;o)

Even if life on the ship is relatively cheap, the maintenance of the same devours immense sums of money every year.

When we see Odin standing in her new splendor after her beauty treatment and can see ourselves reflected in her hull, we think that it was really worth every peso.