Light at the end of the maintenance tunnel

Rudder taken out and cut open for inspection. Looks like suspected corrosion isn't that bad. Certainly water had infiltrated between shaft and fiberglass and a lot of crumbled and wet filler was found. Luckily corrosion is not so bad that we would have to worry about structural weakness of the shaft. Joao, the local epoxy magician thinks he will easily fix it so it last at least 20 more years - we shall see...

More of a problem are the spare parts for the MaxPower bow-thruster:After a week, the Portuguese dealer told us it would take to the end of May to get the spares. Luckily a call to Sailtec in Germany revealed that they have the needed assembly in stock. Too late to ship it to Portugal while we are still here, so we will pick it up in Germany and bring it with us when we return to the boat.

But this means we will not be able to bring Taniwani back to the berth in Albufeira before we fly back home. Taniwani will have to wait in exactly the same well known spot, where in 2009 the major repair took place.

At least we now hope that when we return, all we need to do is to assemble and refit the bowthruster and then get back in the water quickly.