Kingfisher Yacht Cyprus

Sailing to the United Kingdom and back? Well, that's what the chart said! We actually sailed 10.5 nm and just poked into what the chart describes as 'UNITED KINGDOM' - really the Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area. For the last few weeks I have been doing work on Liza so needed a sail. Four and a half hours of sailing… there is something about sailing that gets you back to seeing the world as it is... or maybe seeing God as He is! The wind was gentle but allowed a top speed of 4.9 kt. We practiced gybing… and did it accidentally a couple of times as well. It ended up a dead run into the marina which was a little awkward so I ended up just motoring in. The final broad reaches and run into the marina were a little uncomfortable for some of the crew, but they still enjoyed it. I saw a photo from another Kingfisher owner this week of surfing waves at 10 kt! The short choppy seas of the Mediterranean don't allow for such and my crew were divided between those...

As I found out that the windows/portholes were made of glass and cracked when I tried to tighten the bolts to make the seal work better, it means that now I need to replace them!  When I removed one of them I found the the 'glue' or whatever had been used was horrid. Either it had degraded in the UV light or was never supposed to set but be a sticky bitumen type seal.  Whatever, it left a sticky residue on the hull and the glass and was a bit of a pain to remove. Though maybe not had it set into a hard band of black glue! Having removed as much as possible with a knife, Sheila, who was helping me for the day, used pure alcohol on a cloth to wipe away what was left. It worked, but was quite a task. I'm replacing the glass with 5mm Acrylic sheet, so I used the old glass window as a template. This also helped to drill the fixing holes in position. Then used the jig saw to cut the shape. I used the wood to run the jigsaw down the sides and then by hand cut ...