Baz lubes and scrubs
Baz had a busy few days again, cleaning A B Sea’s hull of five months of underwater growth and now she has a nice clean bottom so we’ll go faster through the water! The Gori folding propeller was quite encrusted with growth and Baz had to work quite hard freeing it up so that its movement isn’t hampered. After that he lubed the rusty chain on the steering mechanism with a synthetic grease because when we turned the steering wheel, there was a clunk in a certain position. If you’d like to read more details from Barry’s perspective, just head on over to his blog for this week. My job was to film all of this, which I always enjoy doing.
New lock for our 'front door'
We also had a new knob made out of brass for our washboard, or 'front door'. The washboard is a large piece of perspex that fits snugly into the companionway hatch and we can lock it with a key from the outside, or by turning a knob on the inside. Because of the (imho) poor design, the knob which sits just above the doorframe gets knocked each time the washboard slides down - which happens frequently.
Obviously over time the original plastic knob weakened and one day it simply snapped off. We could still lock the boat from the outside, but if we need to lock ourselves inside (for instance, in a storm if we are hove-to), this wasn't possible.
We arranged for Aydin to make a new knob for us and he fabricated a great new one out of a sturdy plastic. However after one day of use, it snapped off. Aydin solved the problem by making us a knob out of brass, which he says has a lifetime guarantee. We're very happy with our new 'front door' knob.
Inventory update
Meanwhile, I decided to clean and reorganise the food cupboards and food storage areas, then update the spreadsheet inventory in preparation for a shopping trip so we could stock up on dry items that we’d need while we were on our seven day shakedown cruise to Kekova.
I haven’t cleaned the galley cupboards properly for a year since we moved on board and I put non-slip liner on the shelves. Basically the whole job went like this:
Pull out all items from the food storage cupboard in the galley
Merge all half-jars of herbs and spices
Clean cupboards
Re-organise galley storage to allow easier access to most used items
Pull out all items from behind and under the seats in the saloon
Make a list of all items
Write shopping list
Go shopping
Using black marker pen write contents on top of each tin of food to be stowed
Baz stows contents either in under-seat stowage or behind-seat stowage in saloon
Aannsha updates Excel spreadsheet
Items stored behind the seats in the saloon also include alfoil, baking paper, shampoo, soap etc.
The spreadsheet looks like this
As you can see I’ve designed it to show each stowage area separately, with the following columns:
Item
Size (Kilos, grams, litres etc)
Amount (Number of these particular items)
Use by (gawd forbid you eat it after the date!)
Used (each time I use an item, I add the amount used here)
Amount left (this automatically shows the Amount minus the Used)
Re-order amount (this is the same as the Used amount but is easy to read on the outer right hand side of the table)
So long as I update the items each time I used them, all I have to do when we go shopping is check the spreadsheet Re-order amounts and add them to our shopping list. I have a shortcut to this spreadsheet on my desktop so it’s easy to access.
Of course, I have to remember to check the spreadsheet before I go shopping. We bought a large box of tea bags as the tin in the galley cupboard was empty, and despite thinking that I was sure I’d bought more, I totally forgot to look in the spreadsheet. If I had, I would have seen that we already have 100 teabags stored in a plastic container! Great system, slight human flaw there.
I must say though, it does feel good to have cleaned and re-organised everything. As I write this, we’re on the verge of going on our shakedown cruise to Kekova, Turkey and I’m getting pretty excited!
Let’s hope it is a pleasant passage both ways and anything that does show itself to be faulty is easy (and cheap) to fix!
