We often hear from friends and family: when will you guys come home and live the “real” life?! This is our reality for now and I can tell you that this life is far from easy at all times! Sure – we have a beautiful view from our “backyard” almost everyday and we do see and experience a lot of cool things and places a lot- but we also have to work very hard for this.
To be honest it is a never ending story about fixing, repairing and maintenance. I said it before and I say it again- the actually sailing is fairly easy- the trick is to keep the boat and everything onboard in one peace at all times!
Propeller, dive-compressor, sail, engines, fiberglass, sika-flex, electricity, water pumps, outboard engines and rubber-sealings is just a couple of things that has given us problems the last month. Even the bloody fishing-rod broke down the other day!
Is the boat in a shitty state?? No-not at all- this is just how it is!! If you want the boat to be perfect and prepared for the sea it will take a lot of working hours. Also our boat is doing a lot of open sea hours, she is constantly sailing long distances in all sorts of conditions so I guess this helps out a bit when it comes to create problems onboard!
The last couple of days we have been working with reinforcing the bulkheads onboard. We have taken away Lagoons shitty polyester-glue and we replaced it with proper fiberglass instead. We also repaired the dive compressor, located and sealed a leak up in the cockpit, refitted a window, fixed a water pump, serviced our little generator mounted our newly repaired plotter and VHF radio, changed a VHF antenna cable, solved new VHF connections upon the mast and a lot of cleaning on top of this- we are all very tired of fixing things right now!
Don’t get me wrong- I wouldn¨t wanna change this life for anything else (not now anyway) but it is a lot of work and problem solving 24/7. If you are planning to sail around the world- buy ALOT of tools and bring your best working clothes- you will need it!
//Daniel
