3 Oct - After breakfast Heidi didn't feel well today so spent the day at the hotel watching TV - a good place to be ill! 

Other than that, work continued today on the various jobs of the haul out.  Touch up painting of the bottom paint along with cleaning up of the prop shaft took place - more corrosion was identified on the prop shaft around the net cutter installation but, with no way to source a new prop shaft within the next couple of weeks, we continued with the plan of reinstalling the old shaft and crossing our fingers until we can find a new one!   

Guillermo also got the team to fill the corrosion with Belzona - a product we hadn't heard of before but on investigating, we might try and get hold of. In addition to this the injectors we also reinstalled, after a thorough cleaning and servicing and a start was made on reinstalling the prop shaft. Lastly, we finalized what we needed to complete our sail sunshade and had Jaimie, our awesome sail maker, do the final adjustments

Prop Shaft coming back in - all pointed and shiny!

04 Oct - Our last full day at the hotel and at the haul out.  The day was spent finalizing the alignment of the engine and prop shaft refitting the rudder and last minute touch ups on the paint job.  Annoyingly, when refitting the rudder it was found that the new bushing was too thick and the team couldn't get the pins through the rudder stock so we had to fit the old rudder bushing instead. 

 In addition we did some cleaning of the hull around the waterline, the only area we can't get to when Be True is in the water.  By the end of the day she was ready in all respects to be put back in the water early tomorrow morning.

05 Oct - 'Splash day'  Today was the day when all the hard work would be tested.  We were up early, cleared out of our hotel room by 07:00 and down at the boat around 08:00. 

Early morning dip for Be True

By 09:00 the boat had been gingerly lowered into the water and checked for leaks.  We then took her for a quick test around the harbor with one of the engineers monitoring the engine and rudder performance.  All ok.  Once we had dropped the engineer back at the dock we headed out for a more rigorous sea trial. 

All performed as expected however we did notice that sadly, the engine still bogged down occasional (although not as badly as before) and so may still have some more investigation to do there.  Once completed we headed back to OceanPort and set too cleaning the grime of the boatyard off her.  By around 16:00 she was looking sparkly clean again and with our new sunshade up, we settled in, glad to  be home again. We joined other cruisers at the cultural center for the usual 2 for 1 margherita night and there got some other ideas on why the engine may be bogging down - not fuel related.  Here's hoping that changing a few settings on the electrics may solve our problem

06 Oct - After a great night's sleep back on board we rose and started on our last few jobs on our list.  We sorted out the bow thruster (it looked like the fuse was blowing because there was too much marine growth on the propeller housing and now the unit is clean and fully coated with anti foul it worked fine) and took the dinghy for a test run after having serviced the engine earlier in our stay here.  In the afternoon we went through all the battery charging setting in the hope that this fixes our engine problem.  If it doesn't, then we are probably looking at dirty fuel and don't want to really think about having to clean the fuel tank yet! In the evening we invited Alex and Michelle over from 'SeaChelle' and we played Mexican train and Skip Bo - a very pleasant time

07 Oct - Today was our water maker day and we spent our time taking the whole thing apart, replacing the membrane and putting it back together.  It all seems to have gone back together ok but we don't want to test it in harbor so will leave the testing until we are out on our next sea trial, planned for Monday. 

Charlie's Man Cave

We are getting to the bottom of the list now so are planning to have the weekend 'off' from boat jobs which we are both looking forward to. In the evening we invited Matt and Lisa from 'Lady G' over and stayed up until the wee small hours chatting away.