Year 1 in the Med

It's been a big year. When we arrived in Italy in mid April and then made our way up to Monfalcone we had a boat that we had only spent less than 1 hour aboard. And that was on dry land and 2 metres in the air.

Now, we have:
registered the boat in Australia
a place to call home for 4 months a year
pillows, sheets, towels, etc
cutlery and crockery
all sorts of cooking utensils
worked out how the satellite tv works and bought a new tv
modified the dining table so it works for us and is easily modified for when guests arrive
We've had guests stay
We've worked out how to drive and park this sucker on diesel and electric without hitting anything
We've also worked out how most of the electronics stuff works and fixed a couple of boating and mechanical issues

Belinda has a done a bunch of work remotely and Martin has done nothing.
We've learnt about the Italian canals and marinas and spent a month in Venice like a local. It's a much nicer place when you are a local.
Spent a month in a marina / camping ground in Italy and decided that was pretty good. (Met some lovely poms while we there and will probably catch up with them next year)
Been to Slovenia and spent time in each of their 4 ports. (And decided we quite like the place)
Made a plan to go round the bottom of Italy and then changed it
Made a plan to move the boat via truck to Germany next year and then decided that maybe we'll give the Med a bit longer
Had a day trip to Croatia in a hire car and decided that we really want to spend more time there next year.

I'm now in the process of learning the wintering process while we're doing the cleaning.

On Monday, Sun Chi gets hauled out and we stay the night in a local hotel. Tuesday we fly to Rome and then on to Seoul in the evening. A couple of nights there to help us with the jet lag and by Saturday the 21st we'll be back in Canberra. Monday the 23rd and we're both back at work.

Oh yeah, by mid December we should be in the new apartment in Woden.

Pretty much, if it's in the red zone we've been there.

Folding Radar Mast

One day when we get to the canals we're going to need to have this folding mast. The fixed mast at the moment means that we need about 3.6 metres clearance under any bridges. By the time we've got this fitted and then fold the radar , TV and VHF antennae down in one movement we'll only need about 2.4 metres.

That means that a whole bunch of French canals are now possible and assuming we get back to Netherlands at some stage where we would have had to wait for bridges to be opened we'll be able to go straight thru.

The job now (after I've gone and bought the right tools) is to remove everything from the old one and then refit.

Guest accommodation

Visitors accommodation. Trudy and Justin arrived for a couple of days and this is the second time we've been able to try the additional bedding. We have definitely got better with the air conditioner and certainly comfortable enough for a couple of days.

It's been a lot more convenient this time as we're on a dock connected to the mainland. No ferries for us.

Morning walks and flex-a-rail

Most mornings we have been walking and getting in 5,000 steps before breakfast. I've got to admit that breakfast here in Slovenia has regularly consisted of coffee and a croissant while we're out.
We've kind of settled on two 'locals'. The morning local is pretty close to the Spar supermarket and the coffee (latte macchiatto) is the closest we can get to a flat white.
For the full price of EUR 5.80 we get two glasses of water, two coffees, a creme croissant and a jam croissant. Not bad.

I digress.

This morning we walked a couple of kms to a sailmaker hoping to be able to get some more flex-a-rail. As it turns out he's on holidays this week so I said I'd send him an email.

This is what the flex-a-rail is used for.

And this is the full version of the shade cloth that we bought from Bunnings in Australia.

The plan is to extend the rail so that it goes up both sides of the boat and when we come back next year we'll probably have another 3 or 4 metres of shade cloth.

Plenty of jobs to do

So yesterday I needed to clean out the grey water holding tank. There's an electronic sensor that detects when there is water and automatically turns on the pump. When it has pumped enough water out, the pumps stops. Sound simple, doesn't it.
Not quite, the sludge ends up providing the electronic contact and the pump keeps going and going and going. Anyway, I got sick of doing a quick clean every couple of weeks and this time I spent an hour or so down there giving the tank the best clean it's had in 8 years. Hopefully it'll be a while before I need to do it again.

We also discovered that the bottom part of the swim ladder was attached to the fibreglass with self tapping screws. Not ideal and two of the four were loose and couldn't be tightened.

This morning instead of the normal morning walk of 5,000 steps before breakfast we took a bus ride to Koper and walked to the chandlers and picked up some bolts and locknuts.

While we were in Koper we clocked up the 5,000 steps so it was time for breakfast. Coffee and a croissant each with this view.

While we were in Koper we also did a little shopping, had lunch and then came home to finish off those jobs.

Planning for next year already

At this stage (as always, subject to changes) we think we've worked out what we're going to do next year.
We know that we like puttering along in the canals and we know that the Italian canals don't really cut it when we compare them to the Dutch and French canals. While the beautiful clear (and great temperature) waters of the Mediterranean are awesome to swim in, we kind of miss the 'just tie up to the dock in the middle of town' that happens in Netherlands and France.

So, where to from here?

We had already decided that although there is a lot of Greece that we haven't seen it is probably a lot more of what we have already seen. Islands, mountains, hot, dry, dusty, all that sort of stuff. So as we head south we would be turning right and heading towards France rather than turning left and heading towards Greece.
Next question (and I know you're probably sick of hearing about the really difficult decisions we have to make) was do we go down the Croatian coast or the Italian coast? From all reports there's a whole bunch of nothing on the Italian coast both going south and coming back up the other side. Some really good spots but interspersed by a whole lot of nothing.
Problem with the Croatian side is that when we have got to the bottom we need to cross back to Italy before we go around the bottom and then back up. The crossing is only about 80km but once we've done it we still have about 2,500km to go before we get to the France border.
Or ...... we could put the boat on a truck and do it the fast way.
We've explored the option of just crossing Italy from Venice to Pisa and it's pretty expensive. Apparently each province that you go thru has to be negotiated separately and they all have their own rules. The general consensus seems to be sail your boat to Slovenia, truck thru Austria to France and then get back in the water there.
Or ..... we could just go from Slovenia straight to Germany and then start on the canals and rivers from there.

I've cheated a bit on the map and used Stuttgart but really we're looking at Ludwigsburg which is about 10km north and then cruising up the Neckar River toward the Rhine. From there we can jump across in to the French canals or continue on the Rhine. Who knows? 

Long awaited update

So Belinda started doing some drafts a couple of weeks ago and hasn't progressed any further. She's busy working on some legal thing for Necia so I figured I might as well start to try and catch up while she's busy.
Today (after the clutch has been fixed) we went from Izola where we are for the next couple of weeks to Portoroz. We left here on electric and got all the way there using the electric motor only. Batteries were discharged to 60% when we got there but I was really happy that everything just worked.

The main reason for going was to go to the chandlery (kind of like Bunnings for boats) that we went to last week and return the water pump service kit that was the wrong one. Anyway, we accomplished that and bought more mooring line that Belinda has been wanting for a while and a new Italian flag.
(When you are visiting a country you are supposed to fly a small courtesy flag in addition to your own flag of the country where your boat is registered). The Italian flag that was on the boat when we bought it was well and truly past it's prime. In a couple of weeks when we return to Italy we will need this.
Coming back we used the diesel engine and that worked really well motoring and charging the batteries from 60% up to about 80% and then the generator part seemed to think that the batteries were already fully charged. Anyway, just another job that I'll need to add to the list.
On the way back we stopped at our regular swimming spot for a half hour or so to cool down. Yes that European heatwave you've been hearing about has been pretty warm.
Anyway, a good day finished off with some work and then we'll go out for some dinner soon.

Diesel Speed Test

So this morning on the way from Marina Primero to Grado we got to open it up and see how well the diesel performs with WOT (Wide Open Throttle).

Chart

This is a pretty standard test that is designed to make sure that the propeller is sized correctly.

Anyway, the results are in although I did only do a one way run and it was with a slight head wind.

1,500 rpm = 3.0 ltr/hr = 5.5 knots (10.2 kmh)
2,000 rpm = 6.3 ltr/hr = 6.8 knots (12.5 kmh)
2,500 rpm = 11 ltr/hr = 7.9 knots (14.6 kmh)
3,000 rpm = 16 ltr/hr = 9.0 knots (16.6 kmh)
WOT 3,700 rpm = 30 ltr /hr = 11.9 knots (21.5 kmh)

So, for practical purposes 3,000 rpm will be considered flat out because we'll be able to keep that up all day.

Electric motor test to come but the sweet spot already looks to be about 3.5 knots.

Corrosion

So we've got this gadget called the DDI (Data Display Interface) which is supposed to tell us all sorts of really cool information about what's happening on the boat with regards to the electrics and stuff.

Anyway, when we bought the boat Grega who did the survey told us that the existing DDI instrument needed replacing so we had that done but for some reason it's always been showing an error even though everything seems to be working correctly.

Cutting a long story short, the CANBUS signals are not correct for some reason and I think that is why I'm getting errors.

Today I went investigating more and found the connectors that I'm pointing at in the first picture have a heap of corrosion. Tomorrow I'll find out but I'm pretty sure the corrosion in those plugs is the problem. Should be an easy fix, just get to them with a wire brush and then spray with WD40. I'll let you know.

Height challenges

A down side to having all these gadgets is that they take up room.

We've worked out now that the top of the VHF antennae is 4.14m from the water line.

I can unscrew the antennae and then we come down to 3.47m but if we had a folding mast then potentially we could get it down to almost 2.5m.

To put that into perspective, Ardella was only 3.6m with the whole canopy up. By lowering the canopy but not the windows we were able to get that down to 2.7m

Anyway, we know that new (even now) a folding mast is an option for the 33 so we've asked the local Greenline dealer to provide a price.  We'll know more later but I think it'sgoing to be one of those things that's not really optional.

More on that trip to Grado

Because I seem to spend most of my time writing about problems and fixes I thought it about time I put some good news on here. I took this first video while we running on electric going through the backwaters on our way to Grado. We're doing about 3.5 knots which translates to (3.5 x 1.85) about 6.5 kmh.

David was silly enough to ask how things were going so while I was talking to him I also took this video. When we got to Grado we discovered we weren't able to get under the bridge so we stopped at a vacant berth at the end of a dock and found the right local who let us stay there for a couple of hours while we shopped.

Some of the really nice things Volkswagen did with this engine

This photo is a repeat of an earlier photo but this time we can ignore the red light. I wanted to highlight the yellow button at the top of the picture.

If you zoom in you'll be able to see that it says 'Oil Sump Pump'. When it's time for an oil change, after warming up the engine, I untangle the 8mm diameter hose and put that into a container and hold down the orange button until it finishes emptying the oil. The black screw top thing just underneath the hose is the oil filter and after unscrewing the top I lift out the filter.  Job done!

Success (?) hopefully

So far, so good. Today, on our third attempt we got out of the marina without blowing a fuse. We actually followed the red line on the way to Grado to fill up with diesel and do some shopping, spend a couple of hours there and then followed the green line home.

Even though we filled up with diesel we did the entire trip on the electric motor.

Left the dock at about 9am and took about 1hr45m at about 3.5 knots to get to a service station that was next to the water and next to the road. The good part about these service stations is that the fuel price doesn't have that 'marine' tax and you're pretty sure to have fresh fuel. We filled up and then moved further round towards town. That's when we discovered that the bridge is just a little bit too low. Anyway, we found a vacant berth on the end of the dock and went in search of someone who owned it. Found a guy who spoke Italian and German but not a scratch of English but about 45 minutes later a guy turned up and said 'No Problemo' to us staying for a couple of hours while we did some shopping.

The main batteries had dropped to 66% during the trip there and by the time we were ready to leave again the solar panels had topped them back up to 85%.

Uneventful trip back and we were down to 63% by the time we had docked. All in all, very happy.

Learning all about a Greenline

So we're still in Grado (by design) learning more about the boat.  All good to know but sometimes it would be nice to not need to know.

We now know (ok we think we know) that the reason why the shower doesn't work properly is because the shower tap doesn't allow us to adjust the pressure and the temperature separately. ie. The more pressure you want (so that the pump doesn't cut in and out) the hotter the water is.  If only the tap was like the kitchen and bathroom sink then we'd be right.  That's now on the list of things to fix.

We now know that it rains a lot in Italy at this time of the year.

We now know that if for some reason you turn off the 12 volt system and then turn it on without 'rebooting' the 48 volt system then you will not be able to use the electric motor. Easy enough to do and yes it is written in the manual but in really small print.

We also now know that this red light on the engine is a bad thing.

Because it means that the fuse in here is blown.

And that means that the diesel engine doesn't work AND the electric motor doesn't work either. Good to know!

And we think that the cause of the fuse blowing is the fact that the bow thruster battery had an internal fault. We've fixed that and we'll know tomorrow if we've solved the problem.

On a lighter note we have received the registration papers so we're looking forward to getting out of the marina :)

Voting in Milan

On Friday we hired a car from here in Grado and drove to Milan which is the closest place for us to be able to vote. Yes we could have done a postal vote but it was a 10 day wait for the mail to get to us and then we needed to find another Australian citizen to witness and then 10 days to return. 

Anyway, a 4 hour drive and then we stayed the night before heading back the next day. Hopefully the clown we voted for does a good job for the next 3 years. 

Turned out that the Alpine Troops were celebrating their centenary over the weekend.

 Pretty cool looking car park.

Been a bit of a shi**y week

The joys of owning a second hand boat. There's often a bunch of things that you don't know about.  Like how well the previous owner did the maintenance of things like the holding tank.

Early in the week we discovered we had a blocked holding tank and after a fair bit of work we have managed to clear the blockage and but some acid down there to break down the calcium build up.  All good now but my next job is to clear out the grey water holding tank.

Adding a bunch of photos to a single blog post

Wanted to try something and it looks like it works. (The new thing I wanted to try was just linking to all the photos that have been taken on a single day and showing them all without needed to select each one individually) 

These are all taken on Monday last week (5th May) and show just how cold it was on Sunday. Snow on the mountains in May is pretty much unheard of. Anyway, we've worked out how the heater works.

The last video at the end is the view while having coffee in Grado at about 11 am.

Sun Chi

So we did that. By that I mean on our way out of Netherlands last year we sold Ardella. We had already seen Sun Chi and knew that that was the boat for us if it was still available when we had sold and so by about mid to late October after we had got home to Australia we settled on Sun Chi.

Then came the long wait while we were working in Australia knowing that this new toy was on the other side of the world that we couldn't play with.

Anyway, cutting the long story short we arrived back in Rome on Tuesday the 16th April. We picked up a hire car and stayed the night about 15 minutes away from the airport. Next day on the Wednesday we drove up to Gorizia, had dinner and went to bed early.

On the Thursday we met Grega at the marina to see how he was going with the maintenance work before we were scheduled to go back in the water on the Friday. There wasn't a lot that we could do so we went off to Ikea to pick up a bunch of things that we knew we would need and then again went back to the hotel for another early night.

Friday we where scheduled to go back in the water at midday and we running about 15 minutes behind schedule. When we got back in the water Grega went down into the bilge to check that there was no leaks and unfortunately there was! One of the 'thru-hull' fittings had a flaw in the casting and a therefore a tiny leak. This meant pull it (the boat) back out again and another couple of hours on dry land while he pulled the fitting out and replaced it and let the sealant cure again.  By 4.30pm we were in the water and no leaks.