Winter in Cape Town

“Pelagic Australis” snuggled into the East Quay Boat Yard

While Paula has been beavering away in the rain of Valdivia (or Valluvia as she calls it) I have been busy working with Pelagic Expeditions on the annual refit of “Pelagic Australis” in Cape Town, South Africa.

I flew over in late June and have been busy since working as technical director with the team to prepare a very different style of yacht to “Morgane” for her forthcoming Antarctic season.

We have hauled the boat, for a clean, inspection and paint below the water. Splashed her back in and bent on new some new sails from Ullman, the forepeak, galley and saloon have had a face lift, the pilothouse is currently having a facelift, the instruments have had an overhaul and a software update from Raymarine  along with MDM their Cape Town representatives, and some new toys have been added including a new Rocna anchor. These things along with virtually countless other minor modifications and tweaks have kept us as busy as usual. We have ordered and loaded spare parts from toilet seats to windlass motors to masthead wind transducers and everything in between.

This year I won’t be sailing with the boat, at the end of August, to Stanley as I usually do but instead will fly to Santiago, Chile, to rejoin Paula and “Morgane”. Once in Chile it will be time to haul “Morgane” and spend some of the pennies earned on this job on some modifications to “Morgane’s” engine bed and transmission. After that the adventure continues.