Category: Boatwork

The Ocean Wolf stayed in Lisboa for a month. Despite being Europe’s capital city with the highest number of sunny days the past month was more divers from a meoteorological perspective. I.e. lots of rain. Low temperature (15-20 C). Lots of wind and thus lots of bobbing in the marina. Much to the dismay of the crew this caused uneasy nights.

The master volt chargemaster died. It turns out that these are not cheap in Portugal for some reason. Some masterful googling lead to ordering a replacement model in the Netherlands.

Obviously the wind stopped almost as soon as the Master Volt broke down. Thus not even the wind generator could keep the batteries charged. Predictably the wind came back after replacing the Master Volt. Such is life.
The epirb was checked and certified again:

Similarly the life raft received its periodic certification test.As required it has some food supply included. For reasons unknown this does not include chorizo.
Feeling inspired the Ocean Wolf crew also spend some effort on gratifying tasks such as cleaning the Racor and replacing its oil filters etc.

But all great things come to an end and thus the Ocean Wolf moved on and set sail towards the south.
Portimão to be precise. It turns out Portimão is less windy then Lisboa. For now.

It took a while, had to correct for faulty measurements, but now it is up and running!

Attempt 1:

After mounting the blades:

Some crew members care less than others:

The fall of the mainstay got damaged. Oopsy.
Here is the original splice:

We spend some sweat creating a new splice. Hence we can now certify that splicing 14mm dyneema isn’t trivial. It took a winch to complete the effort:

The result:

Today’s accomplishment: We removed the main sail and brought it to the sailmaker for some small repairs.

We even overcame the little challenge of siesta which meant that the sailmaker was closed despite the sign on the door with the inviting text “come in we’re OPEN”.

Future paint repair …