Mission completed

Time goes by quickly. The week here in NZ is over. A week where home seemed far away, where we would get up at 7 and go to work on the boat returning sometime between 5 and 6pm, a week living on our lovely friend's boat because Alita is under construction, where peeing in a bucket or bottle is preferred over a 7 min (one way!) walk to the bathroom, where cold food or a microwaved soup (in the 🛥yard's employee's rooom for breaks) is better than no food - to make it short: a week back at simple boat life. Different, enjoyable, meeting new people...

I can happily announce that we did manage to finish the template for the new Permatek-deck- 2 days of work hoping I don't mess up. I think it turned out well- let's see what tue guys make out of it.

Also it took us 3 days to take the old masking (Abgeklebter Schutz aller Bootsteile) of the boat off (over 2 days work) and put new one on. It was used for Sandblasting and then all the primer paint jobs. Now it is on for the next paint job and will have to be replaced for each layer- at least another 3 times! Poor Marcus.

Leaving for Shanghai tomorrow and then in to Munich.

Back and gone

Well well, it has been 8 months since I last saw Alita. 8 long months working in Germany, living at home, seeing family and friends. When I am at home all the sailing seems so far away, but when I am here near Alita it is as if I have never been gone. 

I left Alita in New Caldeonia, a beautiful boat in crystal clear beautiful water. In the following pictures you see what I came back to: Alita in a tent without rigging, without her beautiful deck and a strange color. What happened? Rust started to build under the bad paint job that originally came with the boat. And on top of that paint job was our deck glued on. In order to get to the rust everything had to be taken down. Marcus has worked super hard (and still is) to get all the deck off (6 days straight of hammering it off!) and do all the other hard work that comes with this year's renovation. I have been here for 3 days now crawling on my knees and bending down and already my body (especially back) hurts but all I have done is take the masking off (all the protection covers on the deck) (mostly by scratching many hours on small parts) and put new one on today. So all my respect to Marcus who never complains and just does this hard work despite the whole body aching and the missing of feeling in the fingers now. 

Tomorrow or friday we will have to cut a  template for the new deck which will be made in Germany with material from England (Permatek). It will look gorgeous. 

Inside Alita also had some refits like e.g. new upholstery in happy color. Pictures will follow once the Alita is finished in december. 

On saturday I will fly home to work until december. Marcus will join me in september and beginning of december we'll both be back and a new long episode of our travels will start. The tour: around NZ, then Tonga and then ??? until we finally reach Alaska in May / June of 2018.