Preparing to move on board and removing the prop shaft

Tonight (Friday) is my last night in the hotel, and Im moving on board tomorrow. I’m doing this as it will force me to get real with the chores, it’s too easy to find excuses not to work in this heat, but now I really need to get stuck in.
I called into the supermarket and loaded up on basics today, I think the diet for the next few days may be omelette and stale bread, with some fruit. It’s so hot I may find I have hard boiled eggs by the time I open them.
When I arrived at the boat, I found it crawling with workers, two wiring up the bow thruster and two working on the prop shaft.

I’m having the gutless bearing replaced, there’s a bit of play in it, and although it wouldn’t worry me the surveyor pointed out that there won’t be a better time to change it, so off we went. I’m so glad they took it on, as I hate that business of crawling around behind the engine trying to release bolts that are as determined to stay in place as the Greenham Common CND protesters (note to self, work on your analogies Paul). It took them hours to release the last two bolts.
Now the prop shaft is out, the next job is to get the bearing out, A job I particularly hate, having done it twice on Stardust, perhaps they know a clever way.

While they were running cables for the Bow Thruster, one of the guys pointed out a very flattened, dead cockroach near the V-Berth, I was wondering when I was going to have to deal with them, only ever had one on Stardust, and he quietly wandered into a roach hotel and that was ‘job done’. Hope I’m as lucky this time. there is a suspicion amongst cruisers that they lay eggs in corrugated cardboard, inside the tubes, and the workers at the yard have brought lots of cardboard onboard to protect the wood surfaces, perhaps it’s true.

I sat on the foredeck for a while enjoying the breeze and making lists wile they all busied themselves below.

I took a picture of a bungee cord strap I bought new in January, after just 3 months, it’s destroyed.

Later when everyone had left, I started cleaning the v-berth, where I will sleep from now on, it took ages to get all the fibreglass dust out, however on the plus side, I found two new big lockers, with two big sails in them. I didn’t have room to get them out, so I have no idea what they are, but they looked in very good condition, almost new! so every cloud…
I also found a hat, at least I think it’s a hat, but it could be one of those things for keeping the bread warm

So the bow thruster is almost complete, the wiring should finish tomorrow, a lot of the staff leave for prayers on Friday, so it’s a short day. Being a muslim country, I also get a lovely wake up call every morning, about 5AM I think.

May not have internet from the boat yard, or if I do it will be 3g data so updates will be brief I expect, I plan to install the Ubiquity wifi antenna tomorrow, so who knows.

Thanks for reading,

Paul