The helpful neighbour

The drawback of having for a neighbour at anchor someone who has a workshop on the foredeck of his home built, concrete boat, is that he notices everything that is wrong with mine. 

My fault was to mention that I am having a problem with the depth sounder. It seems to work in shallow water but becomes erratic in deep. 

Paul suggested that perhaps I need to add some glycerine to a tube at the top of the instrument. I thanked him and added the suggestion to my job list and glycerine to my shopping list.

The first thing that Paul himself noticed was that water came out of my bilge throughull. I explained that this sometimes happens when I overfill my fresh water tanks. In reply he gave me a worried look and told me to check the seawater pump on my engine. Note to self: must double check.

The next thing Paul noticed was that one of my stanchions was wobbly. And today he asked if he could come over to take a look. I agreed, but mentioned that a carpenter had already decided that there was no easy access to the underside of that particular stanchion and had made a satisfactory repair. I only ask visitors to my boat not to put undue stress to that stanchion and no longer use that side of the boat for access through the gate.

After poking around, and with my permission removing a small panel in the galley, Paul concurred. There was no easy access. He then suggested that he could make the repair if I allowed him to cut through another piece of heavy  teak panelling. Since the repair would take a whole day, he said that he could do it after he finished a previous project on another boat. I replied that I wanted to go sailing this summer and perhaps he also. Paul is a busy man whose wife insists that he needs to retire. And I need to watch my budget.

Before he left, Paul also inspected my teak deck and suggested there was repair work necessary in several areas. And that it would be wise for me to do preventive maintenance on my boat rather than wait until something broke. Yup. I know. I am preventing as fast as I can. 

After he left, I cleaned up the galley of some rotten wood that he left,  replaced the broken panel, refilled the cupboard with jars and bottles, and put back the screw that he had removed from the stanchion base. 

A couple of days later, I heard scraping on the bottom of my hull. Paul was removing barnacles off my propeller. 

And of course he criticised the antifouling paint I used a year ago and the poor job the men I hired did to the propeller by not polishing it properly prior to coating it with lanoline. 

I thanked him profusely after he finished but I suspect I will have to leave this peaceful anchorage if I want to remain in innocent bliss and in charge of repairs to my not perfect boat. Paul's boat by the way is in perfect condition.

And this is when I began to worry that perhaps this one day job could easily become a much bigger problem. 😅 My galley ripped apart, the engine pulled apart, and the summer ruined. So I think I will add this one day job to my project list for the future . 

For the moment, at the top of the list is a new bimini that I am a hiring another pro to do so that I can go sailing. And now the depth sounder and likely the seawater pump for the engine.