Buying equipment

Today (Friday 7th August 2015) we have travelled to Oban in Scotland, in fact a little village called Benderloch, where an Endurance 35 was being renovated. This Endurance was made of ferro-cement and became too big a job to renovate for one person.  It was therefore being sold off in bits and I came up to collect some stuff.

Chris and I drove up from Glasgow on Friday morning after flying in from Gatwick.  We collected a high-top VW long wheelbase van from Thrifty and we drove from Glasgow to Benderloch, picked up our equipment (an engine, spinnaker boom, hydraulic steering gear, instruments and a full length boat cover). We drove from Benderloch back home to Tenterden and having got up at 4 o’clock in the Friday morning we arrived home at 04:20 in the Saturday morning. A long day.

The engine is older than the one I have but is in one piece and goes, as was demonstrated by John the Vendor. The weekend was spent changing the casters and putting everything away into storage. It has a leak on the gearbox shaft which is a “simple matter” of replacing the seal.

Today I have purchased some ACF 50 which is designed to remove and counteract the aluminium oxide that has built up on the masts and booms and seized some of the blocks. I am going to try to use this to save myself some money.

One of the real benefits of the trip was to buy a full length boat cover which will really help me with keeping the boat drive over winter and it will make such a difference to our project. This is worth it’s weight in gold.