Boat Maintenance

One of the greatest things about the sailing world, particularly being a liveaboard, is the amount of like-minded new people one meets. This is not only a refreshing feature but a useful one too, especially when you meet people like John. John is the only other liveaboard currently in the boat yard so it's nice to have an immediate neighbour who shares not only a love of boats but of beer too.

John's background is a colourful one, having spent many years in the mining and construction industry, and it is this background that provides John with an answer to every single boat maintenance problem we've had thus far! He's not only taught us how to do things for ourselves but, more importantly, given us the confidence to do things for ourselves rather than rely on the good but extortionate boat yard workers!

The first job we had to attend to was the leaking deck fittings. This meant ripping down the headboards, unbolting the deck fittings and caking ourselves in Sikaflex (this is a marine rubber sealant that takes three weeks to remove from your fingernails). John's tips and encouragement meant we could tick that job off the list in no time.

Another job that needed ticking off was replacing the portlight seals. This is such a tedious job that I shan't even bore you with it but it was one of those jobs where the first one took an entire morning to replace and by the time we got to the last one we were installing them in 10 minutes. Now that I've gone through that painful learning experience and added that skill to my data bank, taking up a significant amount of memory in my limited brain capacity, I'll never need to do that job again. Annoying.

Good deck fitting: undo, clean, refit

Bad deck fitting: curse, swear, repair