Wow...  what an amazingly productive three days in Bruinisse!  Starting with Tuesday...  We hauled Saltair out of the water in order to replace the lip seal in the starboard  rudder bearing. It turns out that when the rudder was installed at the factory, this seal was off center, allowing water to come in when the boat is heeled and the water pressure higher.  We also did some work on the swim platform door frame to try to stop the leakage around its gasket.  

Wednesday we finished up the rudder bearing work and gave the waterline a quick scrub and Remy offered up a fresh coat of anti-fouling paint at the waterline before splashing her. I then took my first trip to the top of the mast, with the objective of replacing the wind instrument sensor, and I was able to do a thorough rig inspection on the way down. It was quite a view from almost 100 feet up!  We then went out for a short sea trial to confirm that the rudder bearing was fixed and to evaluate the changes to the swim platform door frame. Unfortunately, there is still some leakage there which we will need to work with HR to resolve. we also need to work with HR to find a solution to removing water from the lazerette that has seeped in, whatever its source.  

Last night we installed a new power pack for the bow thruster in the hope that this was the source of the problem, but unfortunately it was not, as our thruster was still dead. 

So today we started off by replacing the bow thruster motor (nicknamed Now Distrust Her, given her past unreliability). This is a beast of a machine, weighing over 100 pounds. We used a halyard and a winch to remove the old one and drop in the new one. Fortunately, the new motor worked!  We'll need to come up with a name for the new motor since the Now Distrust Her motor is now longer with us. 

Next we tackled replacing our two autopilot computers. We have two for redundancy but didn't count on Raymarine initiating a product recall that affected both units (so much for redundancy!). Fortunately for us, only one of ours had actually failed despite the fact that both units had the same faulty hardware.

We then tackled the faulty bilge pump sensor and tested our bilge pump and emergency high volume bilge pump in the process. While we were doing that, Jasper (Paul's helper) replumbed the drain from the lazerette to remove a tee joint and hopefully reduce the likelihood of debris blocking the drain.  

We then leak-tested the starboard davit base and identified the source of yet another leak in the lazerette.  Once it had dried a bit, I caulked the opening with some silicon as a temporary measure until the davit can be removed and rebedded by HR.

My one disaster of the day was an explosion of blue locktite all over me, our nice teak deck and the lazerette.  I should have known that something bad was going to happen if I needed to squeeze the little tube with pliers, and sure enough... off popped the dropper cap and out sprayed blue locktite everywhere!  Not a fun ending to a long day!

Guillemette and Seth were active in most of these projects (and in cleaning up the locktite from everywhere!)  Seth has become a master power drill operator and he removed and then replaced many sections of flooring and walls, enabling us access to various compartments necessary to do the repairs. And between specific efforts, Guillemette managed to get several loads of laundry and a massive grocery shopping done.  

Today was the warmest of our summer thus far, with blue skies and temps in thr 80's.  we were disappointed when, at the end of the day,  We tried to turn on the air conditioning, it didn't work!  A problem with the cooling water. We troubleshot unsuccessfully and decided to leave it for another day to resolve.  [It turned out to be a simple fix -- we neglected to bleed the circulating pump after the boat was resplashed.]

Hopefully we are off tomorrow to Zeebrugge, where we would like to take a day off to explore Bruge, 20 minutes away. Belgian waffles, cheery beer and frites are to be consumed!  Then off to France and hopefully across to the UK early next week.

We owe huge thanks to Paul Hameeteman, the owner of Nova Yachting, HR's Bennelux dealer, for leaning in and making this a successful pit stop for us.  He (together with Martin at HR-Parts) sourced all of the components that we installed and led the installation efforts of his team of Remy and Jasper.  While it was two days out of our way, Bruinisse was worth the diversion.

Some photos, in no particular order:

We managed to have a few great seafood dinners in town while here. Seth preparing his cocktail ("my best ever!").  

Happy family shot!

Now Distrust Her on the way off the boat  

Recalled autopilot computer prior to disinstallation  

We finally found some time to get our SSB antenna lead properly connected to the backstay antenna  

Seth hard at work removing fasteners so that we could access the bilge pump sensor.  

A view from the top.  An interesting connection to our cutter sail halyard!