The New Black

On the Move again

The Electrician promised to come on Thursday morning but didn’t!  I waited till after lunch before getting cranky with the lovely woman in the Office, who then rang him but it went to message bank. There would be no point in putting the boat back in the water if I couldn’t get the motor started, but I decided to continue preparation for launch on Friday afternoon, which basically meant getting the toe rail sealed and painted and hope he would turn up eventually.

Hiro, the young Tahitian guy from the Carenage had already ground back the corroded parts, filled the holes underneath and disguised them once again with a new kind of bog, which , now smoothed and painted over once again leaves the toe rail looking complete. I  erected scaffolding to get access to the outside of the rail and with some expensive new marine grade “Sikaflex” sealed it on both sides. I asked Hiro to get me some black paint and he returned with a litre decanted into a plastic bottle, along with Hardner, which I had never used before, but he explained what to do, and in the morning, I returned before 8 to get it done. It was overcast so ideal for working outside and I managed to paint the outside without my usual catastrophe of spilling the paint or having it run down the side of the hull, or fall off the scaffolding. Just as I was finishing the sun came out and standing back to admire my handiwork I realized with a shock the paint was Brown! Admittedly a very dark brown but brown, not black.

Quelle horreur!  I got getting cranky again with the woman in the office who had ordered it, and she showed me the colour card it had been ordered from and indeed in her gloomy office it did look black – and so did lots of other dark shades of green and blue and one which must have been actual black. If only she had chosen the super dark blue that would have been ok, but brown? But what was the point of getting cranky – it was a subtle difference and in any case Sapphire is not exactly in pristine condition – in fact shes rather tired and scruffy looking ! So later today I am going to paint the inside of the toe rail brown, the new Black. The completed outside of the rail looks pretty good anyway!

So once I had my little tantrum  - it was midday Friday by now - I went back to the boat and who should be inside but Marc, the Marine Electrician and he had brought with him a new fuse board, the one I suspected was a source of trouble last year when I was at Rurutu. I had pointed it out to Marc when he first visited on Wednesday. He re-attached all the wires to the new one and “Voila”  it was working again.

Two hours later, Sapphire was back in the water!

A Much better Look