We've got big news and it involves a radical change to our long-term plans
and we're going to tell you all about it in this week's video
We're heading back
to Turkey where we'll spend at least a year sailing the stunning Turkish coast
and some of you might like to join us as crew.
You're probably wondering why we're
doing this and there are several reasons First and foremost we've got many good
friends in Kaş who we miss dearly
The exchange rate between the Aussie dollar
and the Euro is not in our favour. For everyone Aussie dollar we only get 60 Euro cents
Whereas in Turkey one Aussie dollar buys
four Turkish Lira and the cost of living is so much more affordable in Turkey
We're also planning doing something that we never considered doing before and
that's taking out a 12 month contract with a marina. And we've got several
reasons for that too!
The Setur marina at Kaş is just one
marina in a group of ten and when you take out a 12-month contract that gives
you access to all of the other marinas in the chain for up to 30 days at each
of the other marinas and this is an important point
Taking crew on board at a marina is obviously easier than at anchor and as we
sail up and down the Turkish coast we can pick up crew at different locations
Hiding from the winter storms in the Mediterranean is essential and even
though many of our friends who are based in the Kaş marina have been out
sailing in December January and February there's always a possibility that a
storm can pop up so it's good to have a contingency plan and a marina as a bolt hole
We get so many private messages and emails from our subscribers saying that
what we're doing is inspirational and they're either saving up to buy a boat
in a few years or they're considering the
live-aboard lifestyle and not sure if it's for them or not
What we're offering our crew is a try before you buy option which i think is
pretty invaluable for someone who's making such a radical lifestyle change
Yeah so if you'd like more information about crewing send us an email to the
address on screen right now
But obviously before we set sail east to
Turkey we need to get A B Sea back in the water and that means doing a lot of jobs
just like these
A few videos back we asked you for a solution about our
seizing wire breaking fairly often and what you have suggested is that we take
these shackles these new shackles and put the actual bolt through the chain
here and that way the seizing wire has less chance of being rubbed and broken
so we're going to swap those out today put new siezing wire on, put new thread locker on it
So that's one done. Let's get on with the rest hey?
Then we're going to lay the chain
out through the length of the boatyard and top and tail it and remark it at ten
metre intervals. That's the plan let's see how this one goes eh?
All right let's get measuring and popping little bits of plastic in there
That looks a lot more than 50 metres
Yeah but... it'd be great if it was a hundred wouldn't it?
It'd be fabulous and we've been counting wrong all year! And we've been like well over!
No I think I think that's probably right
Now would be a good time to use the rangefinder
Well we've laid our chain out through the
boatyard and when we looked at it we thought wow that looks a lot more than
50 metres and I thought well let's check and perfect time to test out the
rangefinder so Aannsha stood at one end, I went down to the other end. Very simple
you just power it on, it's got several modes and it'll go through fog and things like
that but I just put it on the basic setting, focused on Aannsha, pushed the
button and it told me it was fifty point five metres exactly. So great little tool,
gonna be using this for a lot of Med mooring and stuff like that
Now back to the chain job
So it seems our chain is not exactly fifty metres. It's a little bit short, but
we've been doing fine with it so far so
It's not how long it is Baz it's what you do with it. Exactly
So now we've marked out our 10 metre lengths along the length
of the anchor chain we're going to take this end which normally lives in the
locker and we're going to reattach it to the shackles on the anchor and the
swivel, put Loctite on the bolts and seizing wire where we can and tidy it
all up again. So this will go on the other end of the chain then that gets
hooked into the - inside the locker
One of our viewers also said that
stainless steel comes to the end of its life at some point and there's no
visible signs that it's going to give it just gives and that's it so if you
know what sort of lifespan we can expect from these stainless steel shackles
leave it in the comments down below and inform us and everyone else, cheers
So you're looking a little bit apprehensive there what's going on?
Well nothing much just gonna go up mast to put this in
Got your safety gear on? Yeah. Got your Helly Hansons? Yeah!
And I've got ... if I do fall if you don't
break my head, I've got pads to land on. At least your knees will be safe that's great new.
With Aannsha going up the
mast we're gonna use two lines on her for safety. One will be the spare halyard
and the other one will be the topping lift. Now we've just released the topping
lift and you saw the water that came out of the kicker. I want to know is that normal?
Is that standard that water would come out the kicker like that?
Let us know in the comments below
Right once you've got the bulb in ... yes ... Let me know and I'll... It's in!
All right I'm going to switch on the steaming light.
Is it on? No. Oh
Have we got electrical power? Did you turn the batteries off?
No I didn't turn the batteries off.
Is it on? No. Bugger.
It might be a wiring thing then. Yeah.
Wiggle the bulb a bit.
No
All right tell me if the deck light comes on. Yeah!
So the deck lights on? Yes
Well that sucks
I mean the connections look good
It's not rusted or anything? No
The bulb you took out, did it look all right? Yeah
Okay well leave the new one in there. all right
It's definitely seated properly? Yeah
It locks into place
Yeah so when you lock it into place you can't pull it off and pull it out?
No! There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the connections
Right
Well that was a bit of a disappointment really wasn't it? Yeah
I mean I was pleased that the whole hoisting up the mast thing went well!
I told you coming down is the worst bit!
Yeah.
So you found that the fitting was rust-free, no corrosion, you swapped out
the globe or the LED - Yeah - And we tried to...
In fact this is the old one. Yeah. And that's stll in really good condition.
We switched
on the steaming light and it didn't work so obviously we've got a wiring issue
between the steaming light and the electronic panel. Yeah. I looked at the
connections and the connections looked fine there was no trace of rust they
were solid so yes it's got to be the wiring hasn't it?
Like you say another job Yeah
But you've got wiring on the
list anyway haven't you? Well not that kind of wiring but anyway. Yeah we didn't
want to go at the mast again and ...
It is strange though because the the deck
light and the steaming light are one fixture
obviously they've got two separate cables running to them and the deck
light works but the steaming light doesn't. Must be the wiring then. Got to be
All right, we move on
We mentioned in last week's video that we'd received a package from Heinz in Canada and he'd
sent us this Brillean cleaning product and we're gonna test it out today on
our very dirty dingy. You ready to go? got me hose ready. Good girl
The hull of our dinghy is aluminium and we've cleaned with the Brillean here
with a first going over and just for comparison this is what it looks
like if you just cleaning with a cloth and water
So there is quite a huge
difference there and here looking at the inflated tube again this is a first
going over with the Brillean product
and this is just a quick wipe over with some water
It's good to be using a
product that's all-natural and does no harm to the environment
Thanks Heinz.
If you combine the Brillean product with a lot of elbow grease this is a result you get
Very pleased with this
We noticed at the end of last summer that this bumper here was going a bit
gummy with UV damage so when we do get to Turkey we will have a cover
custom-made for the dingy
Now that we've got the dingy all cleaned we've stored it
underneath the hull to protect it from bird droppings and other bits and pieces
that might fall from the sky and we've also got the outboard engine mounted
here again protected underneath the hull
When we first bought this engine in
Spain there was a kill switch fitted here and it broke within the first month
and Mercury refused to replace it under warranty for some reason or other
so while we were in Turkey we had Ayden service the engine and asked him to
remove the kill switch mechanism. He's also taken the the cabling out from it
so when we do get back to Turkey we'll have him rewire it and fit the kill
switch that I bought in the UK
When the outboard is mounted to the dinghy and
we're at full throttle and planing the prop kicks up a lot of spray on here, it
falls into the boat and eventually we get a lot of water in the boat so to fix
that we bought this: The Easterner hydrofoil. Apparently it eliminates
cavitation and porpoising, forces the stern up and keeps the bow down and
includes all the stainless steel hardware so we're going to fit that this
morning. Just going to position it right at the the curve here and then uh-huh that'd be right
There's always something
Well that was a right royal pain in the bum to get that first bolt through
simply because the the drill is always at an angle no matter whether we come from
the top or the bottom here when we're drilling it's always at a slight angle
so it creates the hole to be a slight angle so the bolt will actually go
through the hole no problem, there's plenty of clearance there but getting
the bolts through and then in a straight line to the top of the fin I have to do
some macgyvering so basically just drilling out the plastic a bit on one
side and then on the top and then drilling out the plastic on a different
side at the bottom and also making the hole a little bit off-centre if you like
but yeah that's the first one on lessons learned from that one I'll see
if we can do something different on the other side but yeah
Things are never easy on a boat It looks like such a simple job doesn't it? It is a simple job!
So eventually we used
the universal tool of choice and basically just hammered the bolt from the bottom
to force it through the plastic So that's that bit done, now I've just gotta
tighten it up
Right, well that's another job off the list and hopefully we'll have a drier dinghy
this season. Yeah.
Especially if we've got extra crew - we don't want them getting
soggy bottoms do we? No we don't want soggy bottoms
I think Aannsha did a fantastic job editing together this
week's video and I'd like to know what you think about her editing techniques
leave a comment down below if you would
I'd like to mention that we've got a new
patron, his name is Chris Moore and he is from America so welcome aboard Chris and
thanks very much for becoming a patron
Next week on Sailing A B Sea we are hooking
into more maintenance jobs and we do finally get to take a look at the
situation about the keel bolts
So if you enjoyed this week's video don't forget
to leave us a big thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't already so you don't miss
out on any future episodes of Sailing A B Sea