Wednesday 10 Nov, re-launch 2021, HHN day 42: Applying the new ceramic. Received FedEx packages at long last, but key items have escaped from the box!
During breakfast, an email arrives from UPS announcing delivery of the new ceramic solution that was shipped from Texas just yesterday afternoon. Perfect, now I can complete the coach roof before all the parts arrive from Hallberg Rassy. So off we trot to the marina office to pick it up. But damn! The package is not there ☹. Back at the boat we review the delivery announcement in more detail: it says, “delivered to front door”. Oh great, there are about 20 businesses with front doors in this marina! One-by-one I cycle around them all looking first at West Marine door. But nothing to be found. Damn and double damn! They arrive all the way from Texas overnight just to get lost in the marina. Pffff!
An hour later I try again. This time West Marine shop is open and what do you know, I find our package sitting on their checkout counter! I wonder how many days it would have been before they took it to the marina office.
With half the morning already gone, I open the package and start the ceramic application immediately. Starting on the side of the coach roof that is in shade. First impression is that it’s not as good as the expensive Ceramic Pro, but it is significantly better that El-Cheapo 9Hceramic from Ebay. Let that be a lesson to you Mr.Glen!
Mid-morning I’m called to Free State Yachts where the long-awaited FedEx packages are arriving. The dive compressor is neatly packed and sitting on a wooden pallet. The new Lewmar forehatch has its own flat packaging. And all the rest of the parts from Hallberg Rassy are in the 3rd heavy and rather beaten-up box. All of it is loaded into the trunk of Ken’s Jeep and driven back to Cloudy Bay after thanking Liz for all her and FSY’s help to import it all.
Now, while my heart is itching to open the boxes and have that HR-Christmas feeling, I resist. There is only so much daylight time to do the ceramic application and I can always open the boxes later, even in the dark. So, all day I toil away with applicator, scaffolding and ceramic and have about 30% left to do by the time is gets too cool and damp to continue. And all the time I’ve been drooling at what is in the trunck of that Jeep, dying to open it all.
Finally, I set up the video camera to record pulling the FedEx boxes out the car and the grand opening. First, I open the battered box with HR-Parts. Most of the space is filled with 5 new sheets for the cutter, genoa and main sails. The rest are all just small parts. It is not till I am almost through everything that I realise something big is missing.
OMG … where the hell are the new rigging screws (turnbuckles) for the main shrouds?!! They are not here. And also missing is one of a pair of cleats, and an electronic alarm for the bilge. But I really don’t care about those – it’s the turnbuckles that we need to get out of here!
I’m so upset I feel like I could cry. And when I tell Oana, she feels the same. Of all the parts that we most crucially needed, it’s the turnbuckles that have escaped out a rip in the box. Frankly, one thin cardboard box was no match for holding 2 seriously oversized and heavy stainless-steel turn buckles during its arduous journey from Sweden to Denmark to Germany to Maryland to Tennessee then back to Maryland again. It’s no wonder the box looks like it’s been through a meat grinder!
Fuming inwardly, I continue to open the other boxes. The Lewmar hatch looks perfect, and the new Nardi Dive compressor looks really nice. Can’t wait to have that one working.
Inside the boat it’s email time. One to Ludvig in Sweden to tell him about the missing parts and one to my new friend in FedEx – hoping beyond hope they have some kind of lost-and-found system. The biggest issue for us is the availability of these particular turnbuckles. Selden no longer make them, and the replacements are a different length to ours, meaning the mast would have to come down again to alter the V1 cables to match.
There are a new pair in Selden-USA like ours, but at $4,000! Ludvig had miraculously found a spare pair in the HR factory and offered them to us for a fraction of the USA price tag. So, unless FedEx happen to find them (very doubtful) we are in for a 400% cost increase on these turnbuckles … and that is if, and only if, Selden USA still has them available for purchase. And without these turnbuckles we cannot sail away from here.
Maybe it will be Christmas in Maryland snow after all! ☹