Idril is hauled out

We're back in Cherbourg to have the usual post-sea-trial inspection and servicing done, and to have some other changes made to the boat.It turns out that there is enough work to be done that it made sense to have Idril hauled out and schlepped back to the Allures/Garcia yard in Tourlaville, rather than having technicians bring all their tools and supplies to the marina ever day.

So -- on January 7th, we motored out of the marina and over to the commercial dock, which is about a kilometer from the yard.

The commercial slip is in the lower left corner; the yard is in the upper right.

With Vincent, the Grand Large Yachting service manager, at the helm, Idril was carefully maneuvered into the lift slip.

Approaching the slip. The lift is not yet in place.

Sneaking in over the slings

 

Once the slings were in place, the lift was carefully engaged, and up she went!

The lift was then ever-so-slowly backed down the slip onto the pavement, where the initial inspection could be done, and the boat then lowered onto a transport cradle.

We were delighted to see that there was essentially no growth on the hull; it seems that the combination of bottom paint and SoniHull has been very effective. There were some barnacles on the propeller and shaft, so we are planning to have a SoniShaft installed to help with that.

If you look very carefully at the picture above, you'll notice that the very end of our centerboard is nice, shiny aluminium. That's where a bit of the (very soft) bottom paint was scrapped off when we crossed a very shallow, but luckily sandy, shoal in the Isles of Scilly. I had a feeling we might have cut that a little too close...

And here she is, dried out in her cradle at the yard. 

We're not sure how long all the work will take, but it will be at least another week. Here's a partial list of what's being done:

• new cabinet for the forward head
• shelf in the workroom
• drop-down storage drawer in the workroom
• additional lighting in the workroom and aft cabin
• replacement of the 12 volt winches with 24 volt winches (to solve a voltage droop on the house batteries when we run the winches)
• additional tied-down points on the coach roof for the FRIB (while on passage) and centerline jack line
• insulation of the sail locker, and plywood panels to allow us to attach hooks to hold things in place
• add a clutch to the mast for the gennaker halyard, so that it no longer runs back to the cockpit, making it easier for one person to hoist the gennaker
• addition of a separate aft line for reef point 2, to make it easier to reef entirely from the cockpit
• addition of a second Scheiber control panel near the companionway, to make it easier to get to controls while underway, and to provide redundancy
• addition of a Scheiber "Bloc 9" power switching block under the nav desk to allow us to add new consumers
• replacement of several Scheiber  divices that turned out to be undersized for the current demanded
• replacement of Scheiber network cables with a cables using a more robust connector
• touch up some chipped/worn paint in the cockpit
• add some turning blocks in the cockpit to allow lines to easily cross to winches on the far side when necessary
• retune the standing rigging
• update all of the onboard electronics to the latest software revisions
• add padeyes and lines to the boom to allow a preventer to be easily rigged

And there's more. But you get the idea - that's a lot of work. Some of it's already been done as I write this, and it seems that Garcia is doing very nice work. Here is the new cabinet in the forward head. Katy designed it, and it's already been installed in another Exploration 45 that's nearing delivery; the owners saw the drawings Katy did and asked for it.

 Meanwhile, we are living in a nice little Airbnb in Bretteville, a few kilometers east of Cherbourg. It's not as convenient for shopping, but there are nice opportunities for walking and biking nearby. The next few weeks are likely to be pretty quiet for us.