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.
