The Launch
As exciting as it sounds, it was a nerve-racking moment but we finally got her in the water.
Kapa Rico floats well and didn’t take on water, well not too much, only a little bit as Herve forgot to tighten a water inlet filter screen for the water maker and the speedo plug that wasn’t quite in place properly. Rework – that’s a carton as they say!
Considering how many hoses and fittings we replaced and fiddled with, we think it’s not too bad.
Lesson learnt. We dried the bilges with towels and kept the little incident fairly quiet until now.
We moved the boat from the travel lift to a pen located at the end of the Jetty “D”. Everything went well except the portside engine still intermittently goes into reverse when requested to go forward. Something we will need to look into seriously – soon!
Keep Working!
We stayed in this pen for about another 4 weeks whilst working on the boat…still! We have been full-time live aboard since February 2018 and being afloat is such a good feeling.
Solar panels, electronics, fixing the lazy bag, installing the sails, installing additional shelves for the copious amount of Tupperware we are carrying! Repairing the helm hydraulic pump and a load of little jobs.
Sophie stitching up the lazybag at night (the big bag on the boom covering the mainsail).
It took her many hours and needles to go through the thick fabric with her standard sewing machine.
Herve fixing one of the hydraulic steering pumps. The man is in his element there!
Googles on. Sophie makes her own Tupperware shelves as it wasn’t very high on Herve’s priority list.
Installation of the solar panels – 8X 100W all up.
With good sun conditions, we got up to 43Amps of battery charging current which is really good and should compensate for most of the energy consumption onboard.
The mainsail topping lift won’t install itself (the rope that holds the boom up)!
Charly loves catching all the plastic bags, cigarette butts and any other junk that floats by to fill up his bucket.
Amelia is more into peanuts and rice crackers.
Herve’s brother helped with the installation of the mainsail’s battens (horizontal rods inside the sail to improve its shape).
We had a severe case of electrolysis on the portside sail drive. Long story short, Herve had to dive and replace a prop.
We eventually finished most of the jobs and got ourselves ready for our maiden sail to a nearby island called Porquerolles. Sophie’s parents joined us for this long-awaited event.
Thank You
We would like to thank everyone who helped to make this journey possible, whether you gave us a hand, supported us morally and gave us bits of advice or just believed we could do it, we really appreciated all the help and support thus far.
Upcoming Events
Leaving the mainland, we went to Corsica and spent a few weeks exploring the island
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