Happy New Year 2011

Envoy came safely out of the water in Marmaris, and is now under cover on the hard.
We’ve heard that the regulation about discharging water containing detergent into the sea has been canned, and it’s great to see common sense prevail.
This relates to water used for washing down boats, dishes and showers – known as “grey water”. Most cruisers are very environmentally aware, use eco-friendly soaps, and don’t need that kind of bureaucracy – especially when most of the pollution comes from shoreside. Originally boats were going to need grey water tanks of 100 litres capacity for each berth. The problems with this idea were:
- most boats don’t have the space to fit tanks of this size – i.e. a minimum of 400 litres (as there are few boats with less than four berths).
- it would be expensive and take a long time to get such tanks built and installed with the necessary plumbing, as in most cases they would need to be of custom design and construction to fit an available space
- there are not enough pump-out stations to cater for even a fraction of the cruising boats, even if they did have tanks (boats were going to be required to pump-out at shore stations and not at sea)
Shortly I’ll be mentioning our cruising plans for 2011, and some thoughts about anchoring.
Technical
When Envoy came out onto the hard everything below the waterline was looking good. The rudder movement was inspected, without any excess play in the bearings. We got the Yanmar wing engine’s propeller shaft seal replaced with the Volvo system as mentioned in the last posting. As the Yanmar gearbox had to be removed to do this job we got that checked over, and replaced the gearbox seals to eliminate a very minor oil leak.
While we’re away Demir Marine will be doing some work for us:
- the batteries will be charged and the dehumidifier run once a month.
- the rudder stock’s top bearings will be removed, cleaned and greased, and a new rubber sleeve fitted
- scratches on the hull from our encounter with a large iron mooring buoy in Santorini will be repaired
- an unused seacock which leaked slightly will be removed, and the hole filled
- the support lines for the paravane stabilisers will be replaced