headerbeach.jpg


RESURRECTING EXIT ONLY IN TURKEY


This is the way I like to see Exit Only looking spiffy and shipshape.  She's ready to go back in the water after a two-week haul out in Finike, Turkey. 

Make no mistake about it, traveling around the world takes a toll on a yacht.  When you are sailing all the time, it's hard to keep up with the maintenance.  Cosmetics play second fiddle to all the critical systems that must be one-hundred percent when you are sailing offshore.

Our last haul out had been in Australia.  Since that time we had sailed from Australia to Bali, Borneo, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand,  the Maldives, Oman, Yemen, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Turkey.  In Turkey we hauled Exit Only to put antifouling paint on the bottom, change the cutlass bearings, clean and wax the hull, polish the stainless steel, apply waterline and hull stripes, repair a head stay strap toggle, and repair a broken diamond stay.  All that work required two weeks of twelve hour days.

Hauling out in Turkey was more expensive than I expected.  Top quality antifouling paint cost more than four hundred dollars a gallon.  Spending almost eight-hundred dollars on antifouling paint was a real shocker.  I pulled the props and replaced the cutlass bears by myself, and that saved some money.  I also performed rigging work with the help of my crew.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was getting an affordable and acceptable insurance survey in order to be able to renew my yacht insurance.  Getting the survey done was a frustrating and expensive endeavor.  First, I had to locate an approved surveyor.  The nearest Lloyds surveyor was in Marmaris, and they wanted twelve hundred dollars plus airfare and hotel expenses.  The survey was going to cost almost half as much as my insurance premium, and that was unacceptable.

I contacted my insurance agent and asked him if a survey from a local Turkish marine architect would be acceptable to my insurance company.  He didn't know the answer, but he advised me to go ahead and get the survey done, and they would submit it to the insurance company for their approval.  If the Turkish survey was rejected, I would be out four-hundred dollars without any recourse.  Since I wasn't willing to spend fifteen-hundred dollars on a Lloyds survey, I had no choice but to go with the Turkish one.  When all the dust settled, I ended up with an excellent survey, and my yacht insurance continued without lapse.

Occasionally, I wish I had a bigger catamaran so I could have more living space inside the boat.  But when I haul Exit Only, I'm glad she is only 39 feet long.  It doesn't matter whether I am at sea or in the boatyard, I've got all the boat I can handle.

In Marmaris, I saw a sixty foot catamaran in the boatyard undergoing a six month long refit.  There were two to four craftsman working on the yacht full time to complete the refit.  I'm not willing to pay someone fifty to seventy-five dollars an hour to maintain my yacht.  As far as I'm concerned, bigger isn't better when I'm the one who's doing the maintenance.  Exit Only is just right for me.  She's the right size, is affordable, and most important of all, she's small enough that I  can maintain her.

I wish Exit Only could take care of herself in the boatyard like she does when she's at sea, but that's wishful thinking.  In the boatyard, it's up to me.  I have to do the work, or it doesn't get done.
 

Taking care of Exit Only is the other side of the sailing coin.  If I'm going to sail her, I have to take care of her as well.

When Exit Only finally emerges all spiffy and ship shape from the boatyard, I look at the results of my hard work with pride, and I know that life is good.
 


Log 1 Peter Pan Around the World
Log 2 Weapons of Mackerel Destruction
Log 3 Pirates of the Malacca Straits
Log 4 Kissing Cobras
Log 5 Debriosaurus Rex
Log 6 Go Ahead - Live Your Dreams

Log 7 The Man Who Built His House on a Rock
Log 8 Ambivalent Eagles
Log 9 One-Shovel Full at a Time
Log 10 Hitchhiker's Guide to Planet Earth

Log 11 Keeshond

Log 12 The Red Sea Blues

Log 13 Feel the Freedom

Log 14 The Danger Zone

Log 15 Lucky Man
Log 16 Dream Machines - Land Rover Defenders

Log 17 Trade Wind Dreams
Log 18 Logs With Fins
Log 19 Everywhere, Everything
Log 20 Shark Slayer Is History

Log 21 Viking Funeral - Burial at Sea
Log 22 Improbable and Impossible

Log 23 Keep on Trucking
Log 24 Dream Machines II
Log 25 Bodysurfing Whales
Log 26 Hitting the Wall
Log 27 Surviving the Savage Seas

Log 28 The Next Step
Log 29 Welcome to Barbados
Log 30 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers
Log 31 The Man with the Unplan
Log 32 Dali Dolphins
Log 33 Flying Like a Turtle
Log 34 The Foolish Man Built His House on a Pitch Lake
Log 35 Go West Young Man
Log 36 Crossing the Atlantic in a Row Boat
Log 37 The Unsinkable HMS Diamond Rock
Log 38 Catamaran Capsize in 170 mph Winds
Log 39 When Are You Coming Home?

Log 40 Master and Commander of Anegada - Frigate Birds
Log 41 Baths of Virgin Gorda - Batholiths of Central Arabia

Log 42 Free at Last
Log 43 Stalking the Wild Manatee

Log 44 Spreaderman
Log 45 Attack of the Flesh Eating Bees
Log 46 Sharks and Coconuts
Log 47 Stingray Picnic
Log 48 Boo Boo Hill
Log 49 Whale Slayers
Log 50 Noddies (Not Naughty)

 

Log 51 Exumas Land and Sea Park
Log 52 David and Goliath
Log 53 Turquoise Clouds of Paradise

Log 54 Momma Nightjar
Log 55 Maximillian The Great
Log 56 Chiton Kingdom
Log 57 Flying and Holding On
Log 58 Far Horizons
Log 59 Clouds Are a Sailor's Friend
Log 60 Getting Connected
Log 61 Fear
Log 62 Grand Schemes and Other Important Things
Log 63 If Jellyfish Had a Brain
Log 64 Cousins That Don't Kiss
Log 65 Swimming With Sharks
Log 66 Perfect the Way You Are
Log 67 Space Travelers
Log 68 Aliens
Log 69 Monsters of the Mind
Log 70 My Butterfly Collection
Log 71 Somewhere Other Than Here Societies
Log 72 Five-Hundred Pound Spiders
Log 73 Red Sea Sunsets
Log 74 Gibraltar Sunrise
Log 75 Big Sea - Small Ship
Log 76 Just Cruising
Log 77 Castle Mania
Log 78 You Must Know the Sea
Log 79 Flying Like a Goat
Log 80 The Joy of Photography
Log 81 Universal Camouflage
Log 82 My Rainbow Collection
Log 83 Indian Ocean Reward
Log 84 Fiber W
Log 85 Turkish Reflections
Log 86 Mirrors and Mirages
Log 87 Lycean Tombs Rock
Log 88 Rigging Emergency
Log 89 Pamukkale
Log 90 Volcano Land
Log 91 Sniffing the Air
Log 92 Why I Don't Kite Surf
Log 93 Resurrecting Exit Only in Turkey
Log 94 Greased Pole Competition
Log 95 Tsunami Damage
Log 96 Afraid of Living
Log 97 Living on the Edge
Log 98 Borneo Adventure
Log 99 Uligamu Tree Tender with Full Benefits
Log 100 God's Fireworks Display

Push your mind in a positive direction with Positive Thinking Radio.com

This web site is a companion to Outback and Beyond.com.

http://www.outbackandbeyond.com