Looking at the weather forecast on my phone I see: tomorrow – up to 50 km/h wind. Well that isn’t so nice. Especially since we are planning to haul Garfield out of the water and place her in the boathall where we can make further adaptions for our Atlantic crossing. „Bad news“ I tell my dad sitting next to me in the car. After having to change our plans a couple of times the past weeks we now have to change it once again. As soon as we arrive in Woudsend, we prepare the mast to be put down. In about two hours we were finished putting down the sails, standing rigging and disconnect all the electronics. Wew manage to put down the mast that evening and haul the boat out of the water the next moring.
„Pizza“ I hear my dad shouting from the door. He just returned from an Italian restaurant in the next village. I try to get up having just laid down in my bed. Everything hurts: my legs, my feet, arms and shoulders. Never ever have I been too tired to eat but right now I‘d rather sleep away all my pain. Having been scraping and sanding off our old antifouling for the last three days, I‘m actually looking forward to the long day of painting tomorrow. We are applying Coppercoat, a modern two component epoxy paint with a high percentage (over 50%) of pure copper powder. After watching dozens of YouTube videos regarding the best antifouling for long term sailing, we choose this one which is supposed to avoid the growth of barnacles on the underwater hull for the next ten years.
After 5 days of hardening of the paint, dad needed another three exhausting days to sand the new paint to activate the copperpowder.
In the meantime, I mounted a bathing platform and the Hydrovane windsteering. The Hydrovane steers the boat only by wind, without using any electricity, which is very important on long crossings. We do have an electrical autopilot, but this consumes about 25 Watts, which is a lot of electricity over 24 hours per day (we never steer by hand…). Another advantage is the fact that the hydrovane has its own rudder, which might be very helpful in emergencies, where the normal rudder does not work or may have been bitten off by orcas.
We also used the time on the hard to place a through hull for the saltwater in the galley (why to use valuable drinking water to wash the dishes?) and mounted a new transducer for depth, speed and water temperature. The saildrive got new oil and a new anode and we also replaced the fixed two-blade propellor by a three-blade Kiwiprop. The new Kiwiprop will reduce the resistance during sailing, which will make the boat up to 0,5 knot faster. This may not look a lot, but on the Atlantic crossing this may save up to two days…
End of October the rigger (Mastenenzo) came and made us new standing rigging and added a cutter stay with backstays. The headsail furler has been cleaned and greased again, so this should be working a lot easier next season.
In spring we will be working on the mast again to renew the wind sensor, the VHF antenna and to mount LED navigation lights to reduce the power consumption from 25 to 2,3 Watts.
After servicing the engine, Garfield can now rest in the protected marina until March next year to be prepared for our Atlantic trip next year.
Next weekend we will be attending the „vertrekkersdag“ organised by the Dutch club „tourzeilers“ where we hope to meet many other crews which we may meet again on our way to the Caribbean. Besides we are going to attend different workshops where we can get a lot of useful information about medical problems, provisioning etc.
Though knowing we still have about six months ahead, we are already waiting impatiently for the day of our departure.
Your Garfield crew
sailinggarfield.com 
Well done!!
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