The nice thing of leaving your boat alone over the winter is that all kind of automatic maintenance takes place. The light blue deck is worked upon relentlessly by small well organised algae who slowly paint it green. For free! That is fine, provided you like the colour green with "hint of dirt" spread unevently over the original deck.

The sail covers get decorated randomly in white patches which look almost like what sadistic seafulls tends to drop over seaside visiting tourists. The feathered work force leave their lunch boxes all over the place in the form of torn apart mussels. Discipline is clearly lacking.

And then there is the underside of the boat. In spring the boat owners tend to use all kind of poisonous paints to give it an unnatural blue colour. Nature then works hard to make the hull blend in with the seabed as can be seen in the picture above. They even glue little pebbles strategically all over the hull. The amount of work that goes into it is staggering.

The unapreciative boat owners then spend hours to get back to that unnatural blue colour and some form of smooth surface on the exterior which allow the object of money and tender love to move at speeds above 3 kts through the water.

During the last sail of last years season the aluminium joints of the sprayhood snapped and were replaced by stailess steel versions.

And my homework of sewing an new protective layer on the sprayhood was making the whole thing appear if it was less than 40 years old.

But the best job was done on the companion way hatch. You see, occasionally it rains in Wales. To know if it is worth getting up early in the morning, experienced sailors have developed a method of looking out of the port holes to see if it rains. But there is no port hole facing the stern of the boat.

It is theoretically possible that it only rains to the side of the boat and not near the stern. A simple course reversal could get you back in dry weather. So to detect rain falling at the rear area of the boat I searched the internet for a traditionally D.I.Y. mountable port hole.

I noted:

1 - they tend to be very expensive.

2 - they are unlikely to fit in 8 mm plywood structure.

So we made one ourselves by ordering an 8mm transparent circle shaped perspex and drill a hole in the hatch. A circular wooden ring was screwed over the top and made the thing almost look like is was meant to be there.

A satisfying job finished.