Tom Döhler
Today was a day with not a lot of boat jobs, or one massive boat job, depending on how you look at it.
Our friends were planning to buy a boat and I went to join them as they got the survey done. We drove about an hour south of Barcelona, the weather was nice, the mood was up, and we were ready to check out this boat – exciting!
We knew there was an issue around the keel, but it looked like it might just be cosmetic. Better safe than sorry though, the survey would tell us more.
We greeted the surveyor who put his bag down, gave the boat a cursory glance and said, “Well, it’s obvious it’s been grounded, and hard”. Our mood dropped like a bomb. Stunned we asked how he could already tell?! He showed us the tell-tail signs on the keel, which looked like it was hanging down on the leading edge and being pushed up into the hull on the trailing edge. Not the start we’d hoped for.
The survey took most of the day and was very thorough. We got to look into every nook and cranny of the boat and ask the surveyor loads of questions. Unfortunately we found more evidence of its heavy grounding inside the boat; there was delamination all the way up into the fore cabin. The surveyor reckoned it was all repairable, but afterwards, would we ever quite trust it?
In the meantime Camilla went to Corte Ingles and bought some decent storage containers. As we’re getting more organised we seem to be gaining more space by the day, which is weird as its exactly the opposite of what you’d expect, but I guess we’re just using the space more efficiently. The solar panel and a few bits and bobs arrived today, so tomorrow should be back to more boat jobs!
