“Take your estimate for any work to be done on a boat and multiply it by 10”. I have never taken this saying seriously before. Typical of most things “yachty” I assumed it was an amusing anecdote. I have worked on boats to varying degrees most of my life. I have done substantial hull repairs, replaced masts and rigging, installed engines, and even done an interior refit but all of these were done on separate boats and at separate times. Never have I done them all at once and to such an in depth degree as I have with Taniwha. All of the previous projects whether for my own boat, friends, or for pay proceeded on a reasonable schedule never as quickly as you like but never even twice the estimated time frame. So when all the marina dock walking wizards who love to make their proclamations about how to do this and how to do that decided to weigh in with the insanity of what I was trying to accomplish in the time frame I was hoping to accomplish it in I did what most other sailors do to these pundits…

…I studiously ignored them.

Who would have known that these particular dock walking wizards were actual wizards after all and not your normal know-it-all street magician caliber dock walker. The sailors here are a bit of a different breed than most places and the harshness of the conditions has a bit of a Darwinian effect on the talkers. The bullshitters tend to not live long enough to reproduce more bullshitters so the ones who do like to stick their noses everywhere tend to have serious knowledge and valuable advice.

Oh well. If I had listened I wouldn’t have tried and we are almost there. Today was a big day.

All the external modifications, with the exception of installing the windows on the dodger, are done. What an undertaking this has proven to be. None of these were in our original plans, they just fell into the wide wide basket of “while we are doing this we might as well do that too” or the other basket of “since we are taking the boat apart lets put it back together perfectly”. These can turn out to be scary mindsets with boats. Expensive and time sucking mindsets. But now after all is said and done the work we have done to her is truly exciting. The quality of our sailing experience will be orders of magnitude more comfortable and safe just from these three main things we did to Taniwha; adding a new companionway hatch, adding a hard dodger and adding substantial davits. Not including the complete interior refit these things bring safety, comfort, and convenience to our passages.

From the early halcyon days of naiveté where I thought we would only take 3 weeks to get the work done to the actual day of splash down was a whopping 87 days. The last 3 weeks of which we voluntarily stayed in the yard because it was a very productive environment for me to work.

Many setbacks kept us in the yard for so long and kept me from doing any real carpentry until the last 3 weeks. Some were our own making but most weren’t. It was everything from trying to help get our original welder sorted and working, getting long enough trailing leads for machines, helping sort out parts, delays from suppliers, power cutouts from the city (known as load shedding down here), removing existing cabinetry to not have it combust from the heat of the welders torch, and having everything in South Africa just generally be a pain in the ass. I wouldn’t build a boat anywhere else but here now that I have done so much work, but the learning curve for getting to the right people and right products was a bit steep.

The hoist went as smoothly as it usually does. No matter how many times you hoist a boat it is still nerve wracking. There is just something wrong with seeing a boat in a hoist, it is out of place and looks so feeble until it is back in the water.

The tow back to the marina was anything but smooth.

Because I had to replace the propeller and had all my electronics disconnected I wasn’t really able to test my engine to see if the gear locking problem was resolved and I didn’t want to test it by taking the boat across to the marina in case there was trouble. So I opted to use the marina launch to tow her the kilometer to her berth. Whew, what an experience. The launch has twin 30hp outboards, which should have been enough. However the engines don’t run well and there were inadequate points to tie into the launch. This left us with the problem of trying to tie her alongside properly and not rip the tie outs out of the fiberglass of the launch one we were making way. We had a very rough start and had to let the boat drift down onto some moored fishing boats to regather our wits, re-tie the boat and try again. Once we re-launched everything went much smoother but it was a far from comfortable feeling. The wind was beginning to pick up and we had just enough power to make steerage.

After some palm sweating moments we arrived back in the moorings, tied her up and I was able to relax.

Now time to wrap up the carpentry, wire her up, and get her back to her operational status.