Wednesday 16 Oct, HHN day 5: Four skin-fittings removed, and we now have four big holes in the hull!

We wake up to a dull rainy day, which matches our state of mind. Big day today, we cut out the first lot of thru-hulls from under the water line, 4 out of 14! Big job, big challenges and big risks. For which professionals are called in to cut from the outside, since none of them even budged when Glen tried to unscrew from the inside.
After Glen grinds off the strainers, Fred from Phipps Marine comes to the rescue with a cutting machine and he drills the inside of the thru-hulls till they fall off, then beats upwards on them to release the part inside the hull. Painful to listen to and watch!
By mid morning the watermaker & deck wash inlet, engine inlet, generator inlet and bow toilet outlet are cut off and we have four large holes in the full. “Natural ventilation” Glen jokes, but I can read the concern in his voice. This was the easy part. The difficult part will be to put all the piping back on and seal it all tightly with no leaks. Mammoth job. But that’s what we are here for.

To take my mind off it (and ignore we now have four big holes in the hull) I go wild in the galley. Well, sort of. Simple cleaning and tidying up won’t distract me enough, so I make a mission of baking bread. My first ever! We have a bread maker onboard which we used only twice since we bought it before we left Dubai, so I can’t really claim I actually make bread. Weighing all the ingredients and putting them in the baking tray it’s all I need to do. Exciting enough though. And turns out it was so tasty that we finished it all! And added advantage: the boat is filled with that lovely smell of newly baked bread.

Meanwhile it keeps pouring with rain. We venture out to the nearby West Marine to inquire on galley faucets. No mixer taps on stock but one can be brought by special order. It has a different base diameter though, 59mm instead of 36mm and we would need to drill a bigger hole in the corian worktop. No thank you.
Back onboard Glen removes the galley faucet completely and we decide to order the original Mora faucet from Sweden, plus some repair kits in case the other taps will start playing off.

Glad to be back onboard and out of the heavy rain we discover it’s raining inside too. We have water dripping out all sides of the headlining in our aft cabin, and also in the bathroom and galley. For a while we cannot work it out and we feverishly remove inspection panels all over the place to discover the source. Then we finally realise… what dummies …
Yesterday Glen had removed all the cockpit combing fittings ready for the cockpit stripe to be vinyl-wrapped. And of course, each of those little holes all add up to have a complete tea-strainer effect on our cabin roof! A tarpaulin over the cockpit puts an end to the situation.

For the evening entertainment, it’s off to the Customer Lounge to use the internet for attending emails and placing more orders.
When we hit the pillows we comment that it feels like we are back on track with boat preparations, and our enthusiasm is regained.