So one month in to our ownership of Giramondo, or big G as she is affectionately known, and we’ve spent a few nights and many days on her and she has started to feel like she’s more our boat. Even pugs has been down to have a sniff around.

We have now been through each and every cabinet and locker and sorted through what is useful and what isn’t. As a result we have removed tonnes of the old owners rubbish and found some useful things too. Big G is now a lot lighter.

We’ve cleaned and cleaned and sanded and cleaned, and actually she’s starting to look better. The leather sofa isn’t too bad, the inside floor is looking ok, the kitchen galley top is unrepairable, but the cabinet mechanism has been fixed, such a simple job, why didn’t the old guy fix it?

I’ve removed the old solar that wasn’t producing hardly any voltage, these flexible panels burn out and naturally become less and less effective each year, so we will build a solar arch and use some fixed 400W panels. Keep them out of the shade and away from being stood on. They’ll also create shade over the dingy and in the cabin.

I’ve been working on the generator, I’ve replaced the fuel pump but in the process of, discovered that there is no Voltage at the pump terminal when priming the system, so it’s probably been an electrical issue all along, I’m now thinking about wiring up a temporary direct 12v feed to the pump to see if that works, I’ve contacted Cummins to ask for more detail about where to find the fuel pump relay switch, but so far they’ve only told me what I know.

And in parallel I’ve managed to find a replacement filter cartridge for the water maker, then primed it with salt water, switched it on to hear the low pressure pump moan like it was stuck. Quickly removed power and no surprise the pump is seized, I’ve managed to remove the water impeller housing plate and that is all good, but created two sheard bolts in the process, and resorted to removing the pump entirely from its mounting so I can strip it down and rebuild it clean. There’s so much corrosion on it, crusty paint from the aluminium housing! Weird. But it now spins but I’m struggling with the woodruff key on the spindle. No end of small hurdles at each step. These broken bolts will be part of business as usual and will eventually drive me nuts!

The AGM battery bank is huge 1000Ah. After talking to some trusted advisors at Advance Yacht Systems they’ve suggested I give the batteries a good deep cycle and check their health before replacing them as they should still be in reasonable condition and if so there’s no need to replace them. The boat set up is actually pretty good and well balanced, the 10kw generator is need to kick off the water maker and will then happily support every appliance on the boat and recharge the battery bank. The one suggested modification is to upgrade the 2.5kw AC inverter to a 5.0kw inverter. A little research suggested the Victron inverter would be a good choice but unfortunately this one is 280mm deep and the existing space can only accommodate 250mm max. I’m loathed to cut the cabinet so the next alternative is to add a second 2500 inverter in parallel, ideally I’d use the same model, but they’ve stopped making those. I’ve subsequently written to Mastervolt to confirm that our old 2500 can be run in parallel with a new 3000 inverter. In some ways this set up is better as we get some redundancy.

The helm station layout is awful, so I’ve ripped everything out, and I will create a new helm station and layout. Initially the idea was to lay a new flat panel over the existing helm station, but the experience coming over from Denmark was that the navigation display was too flat and difficult to see from the helm seat but impossible to see from the cabin, and also when it get wet it jumped around. So the idea I have now is to build a dashboard style helm station. This obviously requires a lot more work, but it is a venture worth taking and I’ve already started making the wooden mould for the outer casing, and made a reasonable attempt at casting my first piece of GRP. Gelcoat is peticular stuff.

While cleaning under the main cabin bed we’ve noticed that many of the screws to hold the bed frame are out or loose and there is some delamination between the bed frame and the GRP hull. At first this seems cosmetic, but after further thought there is a GRP plate across the ‘nose’ of the bridge deck which I suspect is structural and this too has delaminated, so I’ve peeled this all back and will need to re-bond it. The guys at the marina services are very encouraging about doing this work myself, giving me tips and tricks along the way, thank you!!

The teak decking outside beyond the main cabin is pretty trashed. It is cracked in many places and appears to have water penetration underneath from where there were gaps in the bonding matt underneath. I was starting to think that we would need to rip up the entire floor and replace it with fake plastic teak or equivalent as I could not find any teak for sale in the UK, but... on my way out of the boat show I spoke to the chap at a small stand about his teak furniture and asked whether he had any teak decking boards expecting him to say no, but he actually said he had some and could supply if we just let him know the width and depth and how much. This job has now been done, payment made and delivery should be within a couple of weeks, bonza!