istria – Voilier 'HIR 3'

A few weeks ago when we were cleaning the boat for the first time, on our lunch break we went to the supermarket to buy something to eat and Maja spotted a dish washing detergent ‘Čarli’ (Charlie:) on sale. I thought we could use it to wash our hands, but as it turned out, it does so much more…

This time I couldn’t find anyone to help me. Everyone was either working or sailing, so I went to Vrsar on the boat by myself… Charlie was the only one who was helping me. After seeing what Maja did with the kitchen, I decided to clean the whole boat. I tried to apply Čarli to see how it would work… and it was doing a great job, so I used it for everything. I have to admit that cleaning the locker in the bathroom was one of the scariest experiences I had in a long time. IT was completely covered in mould. It was really disgusting, but it had to be done.

I borrowed from my friend Davor a sander and a hot air blower, so I wanted to try how they work, so I can prepare myself for what will be another big job on my list – stripping what is left of the paint and varnish in the interior.

I sanded the main bulkhead. It was going slow and it was actually much more difficult than I thought it would be. I stopped sanding because I realized that I will also need a vacuum cleaner, otherwise the whole boat would end up in a complete mess.

I then tried the hot air blower. I was told that it should strip down the varnish easily, but I had a different experience with that. It worked really well on some places, not so well on other, but I learned that I will have to sand all areas anyway… but I found another great use for it. The interior is all very wet and humid, so the blower worked wonders to for the wood that would otherwise take forever to dry.

Sometimes it was really difficult to find the motivation to keep working because all I see is more work and not much results. I guess it’s always easier to work with someone, so next time I’ll try harder to find some company other that Charlie… 🙂

Last weekend I drove down to Vrsar with my friends to see the boat. We went there on Friday afternoon after work and stayed with my friends (Andrej & Jelena) who live in Poreč. We had a great dinner, spent the night and on Saturday morning Andrej, Tomislav, Maja and me drove to Vrsar.

She looked in even worse condition than I remember from last time, so it was time to get to work! First, we took down the genoa that was in really bad shape, we removed all sheets, halyards and lines from the deck and started cleaning with a high-pressure cleaner which worked great. Andrej volunteered to do it. As soon as he started, he fell in love with the machine and he didn’t let anyone near it. Tomislav and Maja were fighting to try it. They got their turn after only two hours when Andrej got tired.

We took one short coffee break in the bar nearby and one for lunch. We went to the supermarket, bought bread, cheese, mortadella, mayonnaise and beer (of course). We made sandwiches and drank geek on the waterfront and had a great time:)… but soon it was time to get back to work.

I was the only one who dared to start working inside the boat. I had to put the mask and rubber gloves for protection and only then I could enter inside the ‘boat of horror’. First I used a professional vacuum cleaner to take the water out (probably 300+ liters), then we took out everything we could from the interior and the guys started to clean them, while I was removing the mold inside. Working inside was really hard, so every so often, I had to get out of there and take a break.

We worked all day long and wanted to continue on Sunday, but the weather forecast was really bad – gale force southerly wind and lots of rain, so we knew we had to do as much as we possibly could. On the outside she looks much better now, it’s still a mess inside (maybe a little bit better than it was before, though) and we took parts of the wooden interior back to Zagreb, so I can work also at home now.

In the evening we went for a pizza and beer and then back to Andrej and Jelena where we talked, had a few grappas and went to bed. It rained during the night and the wind increased, so we treated ourselves with a long sleep, coffee and breakfast. Jelena’s mom invited us all for a big Sunday family lunch which was great. We had a great meal and really enjoyed the company.

That was unfortunately all the time we had this time, so we headed back to Zagreb to start planning the next steps…

Tag: istria

My friend Charlie & me

With a little help from my friends…