Kingfisher Yacht Cyprus

The wind was low so we just sailed round to behind Larnaca port and anchored there.  First time using the anchor... I've anchored many times before in boats with a winch,  Liza  doesn't have one so this was new. Worked fine though with a light anchor and a relatively light boat. There were a few other boats out further in the bay running with their spinnakers so the binoculars were a fascination with the crew.

 The electrics on Liza when I took her over left a little to be desired... they were a choc-block in a Tupperware container! So, slowly I'm So, slowly I'm upgrading. Alarm system, solar charger and battery charger. A lot bigger charger than I need but I had it left over from a marine company I used to be involved with so I'm using it! Still a fair way to go, but there is no hurry!   

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 ...

We have had a lot of rain recently… really a lot! And every time I have been down to Liza I have had to mop up water in a number of places. The water evaporates and condenses and then I have small amounts of mold growing, which I obviously don't like! I have looked and looked and cannot find the leaks. It's a glass-fibre boat… there shouldn't be any leaks. So today I took the garden hose down and with a friend, she tried squirting water at various places while I was inside looking. I knew one of the windows leaked because since I have had Liza one of the bow windows was cracked. Strange, I didn't think perspex cracked like that!  Well… in the process I found all the windows leaked. Some badly. Then I found all the screws around the windows were loose. Some very loose with a gap I should have noticed! So I tried tightening them to make the seals work well. One of the windows cracked… a lot! The windows are glass! I'm horrified. So now I h...

I now have my gas cooker working! This means hot water for washing up and the possibility of hot drinks on board. The problem was the regulator. Apparently, they don't make low-pressure regulators for my type of gas cylinder in Cyprus. So I tried a high-pressure regulator and turned it as low as possible and it didn't work. The low-pressure regulators either clip straight onto the top of the gas cylinders or are 'inline' like the one I eventually used. The breakthrough came when I found a left-hand thread connector for the top of the gas cylinder that would allow me to connect the inline low-pressure regulator!

Grandpa, what sort of anchor do you use on your boat? So asked my 4-year-old grandson! He's living on a 12,500-tonne ship, currently in Chile, so anchors actually make sense to him and Whatsapp is really useful for keeping in touch with your family halfway around the world. So I went down to Liza and took some photos to show him. He knew my old boat King Malu which was a 39 ft Nicholson ketch, but the Kingfisher is a lot smaller to put it mildly.  The first photo was to show him the plow anchor secured on the bow of Liza . I don't have a windlass. The second was to show him the Danforth anchor, which I normally stow in one of the lockers. I generally prefer a Danforth anchor, but at the moment I'm using the plow. Then he wanted to see around the cabin, so I took a load of photos to show him. This is the small cooker we have on board. It's not actually working yet as I cannot find a regulator for the gas. This is the small sink, with electric pumped...