I guess it’s best summed up by the A-Team Theme or “Working on it” by Mark Knopfler. Long days of fiddeling with stuff. You fuck it up and try again until you succeed. You don’t have the right tools/workshop so you pay others to fuck it up. And then you search for ways to make it right. It takes time, sweat, blood and tears. For example the cooperation with the metal shop: I needed an adapter which is basically 8 holes on one radius and four holes on an different radius. I fucked up measuring the inner radius, the guy from the metalshop put six holes on both radiusses messing up all the angles. The final thing looks like swiss cheese but will do the job.

You befriend some locals on the way who can relate in some way or another. These are mostly a really kind and supportive bunch. They give/sell you stuff you need for little money. They walk you through maps of the local waters and share their wisdom and experience. When you’re down they encourage you. I dunno why but it really means a great deal to me if someone with 40odd years of experience in something tells newbie me something along the lines of “hey, you’re doing ok, you’ll be fine”.

Others think you’re stupid or haphazard or just from another planet. Some just don’t like you because you look like some punk. Some give weird / useless / dangerous advise. With time you learn to choose wisely what advise to adhere to and what not. And you’ll sometimes have to change your mind. For example one of my instructors went furious when somebody started whistling on the boat. I asked him why and he responded “because it’s tradition”. He did it just for the fun of criticising people. Ok, I decided, I’ll whistle on my own ship as much as I want. I talked about that with S. and he just answered that he is really strict on the whistling issue as well because the wind whistles in the rigging if it picks up or a gust hits you. So it’s a warning sign for the helmsman and the person on the main sheet to take immediate action to counter the gust (counter steer/ease sheet/adjust traveller, …). So if somebody is whistling these folks either don’t hear the gust coming or they take measures without a cause. Ok, so no whistling on my ship, I changed my mind on that completely because somebody provided a proper reason for doing things. And now I know on telltale for oncoming gusts…

Main Halyard and Topping Lift crisscrossed, the further already ate through the roller and into the aluminum

new rollers, replaced the steel wire halyard with dyneema and replaced the undersized topping lift as well. And now they run in parallel

unfucking the fuckup by the metal shop by drilling extra holes in the ship. according to the guy in the shop drilling high grade stainless is impossible with a hand drill. Well, it takes lot’s of pressure, low rpm, oil for cooling and a sharp drill bit (good HSS or TiN)

some just like to watch…

The old main traveller crapped out on the last sail and no supplier had something in store for the mounted track…

…so in goes the new, shiny and more beefy…

Learning about marine specific engine parts: meet the impeller. That little guy is pumping sea water for cooling the engine.

trying to unfuck some instruments. This one had broken cables, water ingress and some previous owner removed the data cable by cutting it into different pieces…

big ship passing by

Some kind soul sold me a self steering windvane for a real bargain. But it needs some modification so it has to be completely disassembled before cutting & welding

It feels like slow progress but actually I’m not doing too bad. On the 26th of march, I first set foot on a sailing yacht and around two month later I’m licensed to operate such a craft commercially, bought my own and made did a bunch of repairs / upgrades. Not too bad at all actually. I guess I can set sail soonish and do the rest of the outfitting en route. Cruising after all is mostly doing boat maintenance in exotic places.