All Roads Lead To Rome

All Roads Lead To Rome
Well we left Auckland on Friday 2 March to fly all the way through to Rome.
We had decided to go via USA as the luggage allowance is much more generous at 46 kg each or 92 kg in total. Nevertheless we had more and had to pay excess. Although the total travelling time was over 30 hours we arrive in Ostia on Friday afternoon due to the time difference.
Ostia is at the mouth of the Tiber and is the ancient port of Rome founded in about 600 BC.
On Saturday we picked up a rental car and went down to check out Envoy and all seemed to be OK.
That night the car was broken into while parked outside the hotel. Nothing taken but the car is now unable to be locked. The rental company was unconcerned but didn’t have another car – “these things happen in Italy ….don’t worry.”
On Sunday we went to see the ruins of the ancient port City – Ostia Antica.
These are phenomenal and not only date back to BC but cover an area about the size of downtown Auckland taking several hours to walk around.
On Monday we met up with Wayne & Patricia Davis the previous owners of Envoy and the boat was due to be launched in the afternoon. Not so ! For one thing the jobs being done were not quite finished but more importantly the road connecting the boatyard to the launching area was closed due to road works. This was not a major issue as it gave us time to spend with Wayne & Pat going over the huge learning curve we are faced with Envoy. Dealing with the boatyard was an experience. They always say they will be there in 10 minutes but hours later nobody has been seen so it ended up being a last minute rush to finish jobs. The work done is OK but not to the quality we would expect at home.
On Wednesday afternoon the boat was finally launched using a huge travel lift.
Envoy is quite huge out of the water and it was a bit nerve wracking seeing her on the trailer being taken to the lift. The launching took place but this was short lived. When in the water and during inspections we found that some seawater was leaking into the boat from the bow thruster and there was no option but to pull the boat out again.
Wayne & I spent the remainder of Wednesday and today Thursday pulling out the bow thruster to expose the problem which is old sealant having broken down and letting water leak in.
This is not an easy job as the component parts are heavy and very difficult to access, however all done now and on Friday we will reassemble everything and re-launch. On Wednesday the boatyard people said they would be down first thing on Thursday to fix the problem.
Knowing their timing routines Wayne & I decided to press on and do it ourselves and when the yard people turned up about 11 am (first thing !) they were surprised to find most of the components removed and we told them we would finish the job ourselves.
So the next stage is to launch the boat, complete the handover process and get settled in aboard Envoy.
We have email access OK via gmail and have a new Italian mobile number which we are now monitoring: +34 93828712.