Synergy is now 42 years old! The old girl looks great for her age. Instead of inviting a bunch of her closest friends for a party, it was a bit more of a gloomy weekend. To explain, a couple weeks back, I received the dreaded letter from my insurance company.saying that after insuring Synergy and me for the past 23 years, Synergy needed to have a value and condition survey!. Drat! and Double Drat! (sort of).
While this was upsetting at first, I decided that it was time to look at Synergy with a cold unjaundiced eye and treat this as an opportunity to make sure that she was as safe and compliant as possible. I contacted my favorite surveyor and arranged to have a survey performed in a few weeks, and then went through the boat looking for possible defiencies that I could address before the survey..
- The sailing gear all looked up to date, Check!
- The PFD/harnesses were all serviced, and the conventional PFD;'s were in good shape and the throwable was easy to reach. Check!
- The fire extinguishers were all up-to date, Check!
- The flares/flag in the emergency kit had passed their 'best use by date' so were replaced- Check! (I will note that best not used is the best when talking about flares)
- Out of date stuff in the first aid kit was replaced- Checkl!
That was the easy stuff. But the bilge pump had its original 42 year old hose and it was looking pretty tired and was of a type not intended for below waterline. Similarly, the 42 year olf fuel tank vent hose was not looking great and was not of a type rated for exposuer to diesel fuel. A quiclk trip to West Marine resulted in 28 feet of bilge pimp hose and 26 feet of new Fuel hose piping.
I began the task of routing the bilge pump hose through Synergy's nether regions. It was defintely a bit of Boaga (boat yoga) twisting the hose (and my body) into places unseen and untouched since the boat was built. In places the piles of dust told the story of 40 years of projects in thin layers of varying colored grinding dust,