Saturday 2 September 2017

Readying for Winter at Dunstaffnage Marina

Hi everyone,
We have spent the last two days preparing Zen Again for her winter stay ashore at Dunstaffnage Marina.  Here are the items ticked off the to-do list:
  • Cleaned below decks
  • Cleaned and aired cockpit lockers
  • Emptied water from the void below the chain locker
  • Derigged, dried and stowed jib, staysail and mainsail
  • Derigged and stowed the boom and rodkicker
  • Cleaned, dried and stowed running rigging
  • Removed and stowed over a dozen blocks from toe rails, boom and mast foot
  • Stowed anchor below
  • Stowed outboard below
  • Stowed side dodgers below
  • Disconnected electrical cables and antenna feeds at base of mast

Zen Again ready for haul-out
Boom stowed
At the marina itself we have arranged for the boat to be lifted out, derigged and the engine winterised this month.  She will stay ashore until April.

We arranged for a gas fitter to visit us this afternoon.  We hope to extend our system to fit a heater (probably a Dickinson P9000).

We also arranged for Owen Sails to inspect our sails and store them over winter.  We hope they will also be able to replace our standing rigging and do various other rigging jobs.

Our depth sounder has been misbehaving over the last two weeks.  The Raymarine ST40 unit is very old.  One of our two old Garmin chartplotters is also misbehaving.  We'll be thinking about replacement and how best to optimise our instrumentation over the next month or two.

At Dunstaffnage we've enjoyed two great meals at The Wide Mouthed Frog hotel restaurant.  We may stay there when we visit.

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