Our days before departure

When we last wrote a blog post we were working hard preparing the topsides for the upcoming paint job, and since then a lot of things has happened. Here follows a summary of what we’ve been up to lately. We plan on writing another more detailed post about our experiences with painting the topsides with roller later, for those who are interested in reading about that.

After we were done with primer we sanded it all down and then it was time for the finish.

Between each layer of finish we matted it down, and it total we painted 3 layers. After the topsides were done we continued with the waterline, set up the new name and painted with epoxy primer and antifouling on the bottom and finally we ended up here:

For the record, this is the before:

Besides all the paint jobs we have also done some more preparations for the autopilot.

As we were working with the steering we also changed the steering wire.

Other than that we have also:

• Tried starting the generator, we had some sea water leakage issues we had to solve but other than that it looked good. It will be a good complement to get electricity.
• Setting up our instruments; VHF, HF-radio etc.
• Setting up the new electrical panel and connecting the most vital functions (lanterns, navigational instruments, water pumps, alarms, fridge for example)
• Tested our freezer box, we need to adjust the arduino code that controls the temperature a bit as the compressor runs a bit to often we think, but it gets really cold in the box.
• And we have done a lot of other stuff as well, fixing toilet, gone over the rig, had our genoa shortened the day before departure (thanks to amazing sailmaker Björn on Södermalm), cleaning the boat, started packing and bought a lot of food.

We had some stressful final days to get everything ready but we made it, a bit later than we would have wanted but now we are on our way. Under Current Position you can follow our track.