"So far," you say, "your 2025 cruise is boring."

My response is that it's quite exciting, in a boatyard-maintenance-breaking-fixing kind of way. In a pretty-anchorages-cool-waterfront-bars way, it's not great.

Here's the obligatory sunset photo.

A few days before solstice, 19 December 2025 at 18:17.

Day 18

Slow day, waiting for carpenters to call us back. I like slow days.

We learned that there's an important rule about life in the boatyard.

Get one job done before noon. A shower counts.

Today:

• Did laundry.
• Cleaned the pan under the engine.
• Washed some of the after-deck teak.

Made plans to vacate the boatyard. They can't handle a lot of folks hanging around. We're not really doing much, and we don't need to stress their limited resources. There are three showers, one washing machine, and folks who work there use them as well as boat owners.

"That's it? What do you do all day?" you ask.

Knit. Read.

I'm working on extracting the content from https://www.whitbybrewersailboats.com. It's a Joomla!, Kunena, Phoca quagmire of plug-ins and add-ons. Back in 1991-2006, owners had a newsletter. There was a Yahoo! group until about 2008 or so. Someone set up this Joomla! site around 2008 to provide more structured interactions through an online forum.

Then, when Facebook emerged, I made a Whitby 42 Yachts Facebook group. There's a trade-off there. We do (almost) no work to support it. However, it's very difficult to preserve the intellectual property.

Day 19

Carpenter, Ryan, was on-site for another job. Joe sent Ryan to check on what we needed. For Ryan, it’s quick: cut and go do other stuff.

Here's the plan.

1. Ryan cuts the floor.
2. While Joe rebeds the through-hull, Ryan makes a replacement section of floor from marine-grade plywood and an overlaying piece of unfinished teak. (Not teak-holly veneer like everything else; if he did, the color and finish won't match.)
3. When the through-hull is done, Ryan can return with a pair of "ledgers" that go under the existing cabin sole to make a shelf. Then he drops the replacement section in.

Meanwhile, I de-rigged the mizzen in preparation to be hauled. I varnish the grab rails CA washed.

Day 20

Get hauled. Mr. Lehman started and ran perfectly.

We didn't go to our long-term storage slot. Instead, they dropped us right by the liftwell in a temporary location. We're only out for a (significant) repair. And then we're back in.

Matt (one of the crane crew) found a small problem in the forward section of the hull, separate from the through hull. This needs filler.

It's not deep -- maybe 1/2 inch or less. There's no water penetration. We're absolutely certain of that.

We looked everywhere for the leak that was causing the bilge pump to run. It was the aft through-hull that Joe's going to rebed.

This tiny gap located at the "turn" of the hull right where the keel starts. Inside, the interior hull surface forward of the mast appears relatively flat. While the lead keel is adjacent to the mast, the exterior has a gentle slope, filled with plastic. The turn isn't structural, it's just a hydrodynamic shape to push water aside and avoid turbulence.

Ryan cut cabin sole. (And the supporting fiberglass structure.)

This took a long, long time. There's a lot of fibreglass to cut through.

There's a tradeoff here. The fibreglass is structural: cutting too much could weaken the structure. The hole will provide access to a life-or-death through-hull shutoff valve. More access is helpful. The real question is "how much is enough?" something we don't know.

Joe started trying to get the through hull fitting apart. This can be pleasant. Or it can be expensive.

The fitting is a piece of bronze pipe with a rounded mushroom cap on the end that sticks through the hull. This can be backed with a nut, which isn't a great idea. In our case each one is backed with a bronze seacock (a valve), so we can close the damned thing in case of a problem with the hose inside the boat.

Inside the fitting is a key. This is either a rectangular slot or an extra bit of bronze that stands up proud, inside the fitting. There's tool, a Through-Hull Step Wrench, that engages with this key and sticks out so you can put a pipe-wrench on it.

If that doesn't work, there's always the angle-grinder. You cut the mushroom into pie slices and bash each slice of pie in toward the center until it breaks free of the threads and falls out.

We moved to a hotel.