Hey everyone - here's my first entry to the new blog, hope ya like it. As you probably already know, Nathalie is French - and will therefore be posting some entires in French - so don't mistake that for really really poor spelling… Some blogs will be joint entries, some will be simply translated & duplicated, and some might be different entries entirely. Sorry if you can't read one language or another, but if you want some good fun, try hitting the 'translate' button on the page to see the horrendous Google version of the other's language!
For the sake of being professional, we'll refer to the boat as T M, and pray that Google searches don't blow our cover.
To start, I'll fill you in on the last 2 weeks - basically the beginning of our journey on T M. We found the yacht to be pretty much what we had expected, with a few unexpected quirks, which is also what we expected. Confused yet? To be fair, neither of us has ever worked on a perfect yacht or for a perfect owner so we keep our excitement subdued until we get a good inside look at the entire situation. So far, we are very happy with everything. The yacht is extremely well built, comfortable, luxurious, practically designed, and sexy looking. She is literally a 'mini-superyacht', as described by Yachting Magazine. Although somewhat 'small' at under 70 feet, the space and comforts provided, as well as the enormous arsenal of very modern and advanced systems put her well into that category. She is almost identical in appearance (and somewhat in design) to an Oyster. If you know anything about yachts, you will probably have heard of Oyster - they are synonymous with expensive, owing to their beautiful yachts built to meticulous standards that have built quite a pedigree.
The Good: After going through the boat, we found most everything to be in good or excellent condition. All of her decks, hull, rig and equally as important - her interior upholstery, joinery, etc looked pretty new. Except for a few soon-to-be-resolved issues with the battery charger, all of the systems were well maintained.
The Bad: We uncovered an enormous supply of personal items onboard. Until now, the yacht has only been used for personal use by the owner and his family. He and his wife have 3 children, and between the 5 of them, they have amassed a huge selection of clothes, shoes, sailing equipment, crockery, games, books, canned food, toiletries, linens, and a lot of other random stuff. This would not be a problem, except that we have been hired to bring the boat to charter standards, and charter her as much as possible. That requires a huge amount of specialized items to be stowed, mostly in the way of amenities. Obviously that presents a storage issue. There is a lot of stowage onboard for a yacht offer size, but she is still a sailboat, and therefore limited.
The (potentially) Ugly: None of the above mentioned should present a problem normally. In an ideal world, Nath and I would sweep through the yacht, throw out anything that wasn't 'charter-worthy', take many trips to the shops with the owner's credit card, and fit the yacht out with premium stuff to really 'wow' the brokers and guests at the charter show. After purchasing all this new stuff, we would stow it how we saw fit. This usually entails pretty clever systems of hiding things around the interior in areas that provide easier access to the things we will use the most during a charter. The problem we are having, is that the owner is quite attached to his boat and his stuff - just the way it is. He likes having his personal influence on the sheets, the crockery, the towels, the water sports equipment, etc… He apparently also likes to have things organized in his particular fashion, so that he can find things when he comes aboard. We have been trying to break it to him that some things simply have to be changed if he wants to have any success at all in the charter business. He seems to have no problem spending money when it needs to be spent, but he wants an input in everything. This makes it very difficult to do our job, always worrying about his opinion on simple decisions like which plates to order and where to put them. That being said, he is a very nice guy - usually very reasonable and always respectful. I hope after a charter or 2 it will get easier to find compromises with him on boat issues and things will run much smoother.
We've had a long week! Until yesterday, 3 technicians from Discovery were onboard completing some maintenance work on our enormous deck house windows. By maintenance I mean they were smashing all the old ones out with a hammer and glueing some new ones in. There was apparently a manufacturers defect in the windows, causing the outer pane to wiggle up and down independently of the inner pane. This of course compromised the seal and allowed water inside leaving permanent streaks of salt between the 2 panes. Not attractive or safe. Anyway the guys were all about our age and really nice, but they forgot the dinghy!!
The owner had a small sailing dinghy strapped to the foredeck for his kids to use. This dinghy was a terrible pain in the butt when using the blade jib (staysail) and it covered the forecabin hatch preventing it from opening. The owner and the former skipper decided it had to go, and arranged for the Discovery guys to haul it back to England in the van that they drove down in with the windows. Apparently the guys didn't feel like lugging the thing up the dock yesterday morning, because when Nathalie and I woke up they were gone and the dinghy was still on the dock. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but they had already packed the sails, mast, rudder, and centerboard in the van rendering the hull a bit useless. We inquired about sending the hull back to the UK via a van courier service, but as my Dad and I found out, Gibraltar is a NIGHTMARE to ship anything in/out of. The quote from the courier came to 1,300 British pounds, which off the top of my head is equivalent to about $2,000 usd. That's actually more than the dinghy is worth new, so I don't think the owner is going to be very happy. I hope this one isn't going to somehow be blamed on me, but I definitely have had stupider things pinned on me by nicer owners so I woudn't be surprised.
Today we had an inspector onboard from the MCA. The MCA is the British equivalent to the USCG, except that they are much larger, much better organized, much more stringent in their standards, and therefore widely recognized in almost every country in the World - unlike the Coast Guard. T M is a British flagged boat, and coded to very high MCA standards as a commercial vessel - meaning she can operate for-profit charters with up to 6 guests / 2 crew, up to 60 miles from any safe port. To stay compliant, she must undergo a rigid inspection every 5 years, with interim inspections every year in between. As this was an interim inspection, we had a little bit of slack, fortunately. Most everything was already in order, aside from some of the recently-out-of-date safety equipment that I replaced before hand. The inspector had issues with our automated fire extinguishing system in the engine room, and also the use of our staysail (reefed by furling drum) being counted as a 'stormsail'. Normally, these 2 items would be issues serious enough to fail us in an inspection, but thanks to Nathalie's hospitality and a great lunch (with some British tea) served up hot to the inspector, he gave us our paperwork anyways under the condition that we remedy our deficiencies before we leave.
Despite our never ending and ever growing list of things to do, we are still on schedule to have everything finished to be able to leave by Nov 1st. This is an absolutely critical deadline, as we have to be in Antigua for the charter show by Dec 3. If the passage goes well, and the tradewinds are blowing like they should be, we could cross in under 20 days. If it ends up being a passage like Nathalie's trip on the Swan last December, it could take as long as a month. We are confident at this point that all will be well. It is nice actually to stay so busy on the boat, because Gibraltar is pretty much a dump. The big rock is pretty cool looking, but the town has nothing in it except touristy duty-free shops and construction sites. It is very hard to find parts here, and there is not much to do outside the marina complex which has a few restaurants and British pubs.
That's it for now, there's a big low pressure system moving through tonight/tomorrow that may bring some nasty weather so we are going to tighten the lines and curl up and watch a movie. -B
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