How Far Have We Come

We are getting close to our insurance renewal date and this year we might switch insurers. The poor girls at our brokers are shopping our 'business' (premium dollars) around and we have been facing a barrage of questions regarding our sailing experience and where we intend to secure Zofia. The companies mostly struggle with the concept that one does not have a home pen/berth or permanent mooring. It's possible that underwriters would prefer a boat that is never used and is permanently secured to something so that if it were to sink from lack of attention it would be easy to retrieve. Certainly, an inanimate boat might be less prone to breakages although there is nothing worse in the world than and unused and unloved boat rotting away. The marine environment rots everything really fast too. We think that in the main, we should represent a good risk. Zofia is our home and we are very motivated indeed to keep her in good running order and not likely to take unnecessary risks. The company that we are currently favouring is the one that actually understands that some people adopt a cruising (albeit sometimes cursing) lifestyle and accept that this means NO home base to return to at the end of a passage.

We are Zofia's first owners so we can probably claim 99.9999% of her sea miles. We think our tally by now would slightly exceed 5,000nm and our engine has clocked 1,250 hours. Yes, we do motor and are never ashamed to trade diesel for distance when necessary. The reason that we are less precise about our logged sea miles is because the log on the transducer is prone to getting clogged up and if the paddles don't turn, the miles aren't recorded.

I should probably make the paddles more of a priority and rush to clean them whenever clogged. Often they loosen or release on their own. Staying still in a marina is likely to favour the little sea critters building up.

It's always a bit unnerving creating a hole in the boat to remove the transducer and replace it with the blank while cleaning up the paddles.

The little brass knobs get a lot of passengers. Most have been cleaned off already. 

Sad to say the little crab didn't escape!

 Now to make the switch. Blank out and CLEAN transducer in.

This job makes my heart race!

It's a wet job, hence the sponge which I was lucky to have concealed from The Bloke. 

Most sponges seem to migrate to the dinghy when I'm not looking!