We can now truly share the nervous feeling of those YouTubers’ who share their experience of their treasured home being lifted out of the water. It’s an alien experience, boats are not supposed to be on land. It is an unnatural environment for them. Watching big ‘G’ being lifted out with 50cm to spare on each side of the hoist was a little heart in mouth, and to make sure the slings were in the right position around main bulkheads without knocking the saildrives was a bit like shooting in the dark. Thank goodness for the photos we have of her lifted out previously.

While in the hoist we checked the keels for support and decided not to sit her on the keels, at least not entirely, the rear of the keel sounds hollow, and we know that the main bulk head is 20-30cm behind the keel so we’ve chosen to block her up there and under the front of the keel where we can hear the structural strength underneath. We’ve checked the rudders and the bearings are very lose, and had a look at the saildrives to see if the seals could be damaged, difficult to say. These will need a closer inspection. It did dawn on me that saildrives have two sets of seals, the large ones that seal the saildrive to the hull, and the small ones that seal the inner gearing and rotating shaft from the sea water. It’s this later one that would allow sea water ingress into the oil, and the one that is often damaged due to ropes and lobster pots. Might want to think about protecting this with a prop rope knife or whatever they’re called.

So she’s safely blocked up, and already had her belly sandblasted in preparation for a new fresh build up of antifoul. We’ve chosen Silic One after watching a number of video reviews! It looks to be by far the best, and will keep her nice and shine for several years!

We’ve decided not to drop the mast on this occasion, as the rigging inspection confirmed there is nothing visibly wrong with the rig, just that it is old. So we will defer the £20k on re-rigging her until next winter, as replacing it is only a requirement of insurance should we decided to continue to do an atlantic crossing. And we may change our mind.