Episode 64 Lorelei's Major Refit in Bundaberg

 

We’re Baaack !!!!!!

Well Almost….

At the end of our last Sailing blog post it was 2018 and we had decided to stop cruising after almost 7 years full time and over 2 dozen countries visited.

We put Lorelei into long term storage for an extended period of time while we went back to family and work.

We were hoping it would be a few short years. Boy were we wrong!

 

What we didn’t expect was the way the world went from 2018 onwards.

In a short summary:

We moved to Geraldton in WA and joined back into the Expedition Cruise Ship Industry.

We brought a beautiful 2 story house there on a large 2000sq block with stunning 180-degree ocean views.

We sadly lost 6 family members including both of Lisa’s parents and her only uncle.

Paul’s mum and step-dad Ron sold their SE QLD farm and also moved to Geraldton.

COVID Hit – well enough said on that one... WA wasn’t letting us out and we were stuck there – fortunately. However, the cruise ship industry fell apart.

And after covid the staffing shortage on the cruise ships got worse and worse and we worked our butts off….! 

At the end of the 2024 cruise ship season, Paul retired and we flew back to Lorelei in Bundberg QLD in October to start the massive job of fixing her up and doing a huge refit to get her ready to cruise both locally and internationally from mid-2025 onwards.

We flew from Geraldton in WA to Brisbane in QLD and drove from there to Bundaberg.

DISCLAIMER - We all know Paul has a background in professional photography and normally the images on this blog are half decent.
For this part of the refit however, Paul left his camera equipment safely at home, and so these photos were all taken with a phone - and an old Iphone 12 !!!!!
Future posts will have his camera gear back onboard - and even some new gear including lenses, bodies, housings, drones, etc.... so stay tuned.

The first part of the refit was to tackle the rust spots that had developed in both the hull and around the windows.

Both spots had given us issues previously and now we had time, we wanted to fix the issue properly and permanently.

It meant getting in a steel fabricator to cut out the section in the hull above the propellor and for Paul to then chip out the old cement and fibreglass that was up against the hull inside the vessel.

Within the first week we also had Colin, Jesse and Will from Quin Rigging and Sails come up from the Sunshine Coast to take the masts off Lorelei.

A crane turned up and within half a day they had the masts removed, the rigging stripped off and the spreaders removed.

The 2 masts, 2 booms and spinnaker poles where then placed onto trestle stands next to Lorelei.

They required to be completely stripped of every bolt, rivet and fitting and then sanded back to bare metal so they could be painted.

It wasn’t an urgent job and the idea was Paul could slowly work on them over the next 6 weeks in between other jobs or when paint was drying and limited access to other areas.

A lot of the old screw and rivet holes had to be bogged up prior to painting as we were putting new fittings or winches which had different hole patterns.

One of Paul’s biggest jobs was going to be fixing the windows. There are 13 of them around the saloon area and all were having ongoing rust issues.

So this time we decided to strip off the polished stainless steel frame and take the old acrylic windows out completely.

Then it was over 2 solid weeks of grinding out the old rust treating the area, bogging and fairing before more treating and then priming and painting.

We had new tinted acrylic panels made and spent many an afternoon glueing them in and finally cleaning the stainless-steel frames and re-installing them.

We used over 15 tubes of sealant and 300 new stainless bolts that had to be re-tapped into the steelwork. It has come up great but was a major job and made all the more stressful as any rain would have come straight into the inside of the boat.

We had to put drop sheet over the interior as we repaired and painted the windows.
Inside was a mess!!!!

At the same time, we removed all the old flip portlights that were in the cockpit and along the rear wall of the master bedroom.

Once they were removed, we got out the angle grinder and made much bigger holes and inserted new hatches with more a modern locking system, tinted acrylic to match the new windows and much better ventilation inside for those areas.

They are much more watertight too.

The ones in the galley and engine room/workshop have made a huge difference to airflow.

All the while it was raining heavily down in Brisbane and the surrounding areas but fortunately the weather systems seemed to keep going around us and we missed the majority of the rain – thankfully.

The paint which we had ordered turned up very quickly considering it was a special colour mix and it was coming from Victoria.

We ended up with 70 litres of Jotun 2 pack paint which was over $3000!!!

And that didn’t include any antifoul or ty-coat….

The next job was also weather dependent as we had to cut off the entire deck section on the bow around the old anchor winch system. We decided on a new anchor winch and accessories from Muir Australia and so the old baseplates had to be removed.

We had always had rust issues on the deck where the chain rubbed along the deck between the winch and the bow roller, so this time we decided to do the entire area in stainless steel.

Once again, we had to call in Steel Fabricators to do this as the deck was curved and the new sheeting had to be rolled to a camber prior to welding it back on.

It was damn hot for Paul who had to be on standby inside the anchor locker on fire-watch with an extinguisher just in case.

Once the base plates were welded on, then we could install the deck switches and the new anchor winch.

We removed all the old anchoring equipment and put it up for sale and sold it within a day!

At the same time Paul decided to re-vamp the anchor locker and repainted all the metal hull areas, installed and new ramp for the chain to roll down into the locker and flow coat the fibreglass chain storage area.

The flow coat is nasty toxic stuff and for Paul it was a stinky and hot exercise that was not at all enjoyable.

We also purchased new anchor chain (160m of 13mm graded short link so that should hold us in almost anything. It was also loaded into the finished locker.

The choice of what new anchor to buy was a big decision and we changed our minds 3 times. In the end Lisa decided on a new Aussie made SARCA Excel anchor which has rave reviews worldwide. Rex the manufacturer was great to deal with and we ungraded in size to a no.9 (125lb) anchor which was bigger than our old 100lb CQR.

The big question was whether it was going to fit onto our existing bow roller and bow sprit system. We had to have a craft afternoon and build a template out of corflute to do the test. It did fit – just – and will need a few steel brackets made to hold it securely in place.

Around this time, we also decided with the good weather to paint the top deck a new colour and move away from the outdated existing yellow/sand colour.

The warm grey colour had to be dark enough to not reflect the sun (white decks are not good for this reason) but light enough that they wouldn’t absorb the heat and make them too hot to walk on and heat up the vessel inside.

It is always a compromise with a deck colour but we are very happy with the light grey result – thankfully!

Paul did the painting in 3 sections over a period of 2 weeks so we could still get on and off the boat and allow other work to continue.

With more good weather forecast, we decided to replace all the acrylic panels in the deck hatches. Once again, no rain was critical as there were going to be big holes into the boat.

We removed the existing hatches, separated the acrylic from the stainless surrounds, cleaned to old sika-flex of before polishing them back to a mirror finish and ready for the new acrylic inserts.

Joanne and Roy at Wide Bay Plastics were excellent and very accommodating with our special requests. They had ordered the acrylic in when we did the windows so it all matched and they were able to cut then out and drill the holes to match in just a few hours so the hatches weren’t off the boat for too long.

There were 9 in total and we did them in 3 batches.

Once again we went through over a dozen tubes of sealant to put them back into the stainless frames. 

When the rain did finally come, Paul moved all the boxes of parts that came off the masts and booms to inside and he slowly cleaned, polished, lubricated and serviced all the parts so they were ready to be put back on at a later date.

There ended up being 4 boxes of parts in about 50 large snap-lock bags that were all labelled.

Goodness knows how many times Paul had to go to the marina chandlery or bolt shop to get new bolts, nuts and rivets to replace the old ones. For a few extra buck it simply wasn’t worth the risk of putting the old ones back in.

All in all Paul spent about 75 hours inside during the rainy day and evenings completing the servicing. 

When the masts, booms and fittings were finally stripped and sanded back, Tony from All Types Blasting took then with 2 forklifts into his painting shed for a final sandblast and paint. They had to high build primer and re-sand to get rid of all the old pitting within the aluminium.

 

It took over 10 days before we were able to get them back and start reassembling them with the new and/or serviced parts.

We also did some fun jobs at the time like putting new lights under our crow's nest and spray painting the life ring.

We were able to enjoy some great sunsets as we sat on the top deck at the end of a long day's work.

The next big job we to move Lorelei into the spray shed so she could get re-painted on her hull and topsides.

It took a full day to clear the worksite around Lorelei to allow the travi-lift to have access to lift her up and take her the 150m to the paint shed.

The reversed her into the shed so the bow was facing outwards.

Once the doors were closed, we had a dry area which we could not only get painting but to also do other jobs afterhours using the scissor lifts on the concrete floor and the roof stopping any chance of rain getting in.

That was just as well as the second night we had a beautiful sunset followed by a wild storm that brought a lot of wind and rain.

Over the next week Tonys’s staff Pete, AJ and Gary (everyone calls him Bear…) along with Paul, proceeded to sand the top sides (the hull area that is above the waterline) back and bog up the smaller pin holes and weld joins.

Then we spent a full day masking the areas so they could paint.
It took ages to mask around the stanchions and davits and we had to put a huge amount of heavy-duty painting blankets over the entire deck area.

Then it was a long process to paint with high-build primer then fair - and more primer and more fair.....

Once it was in primer then it was all masked over so they could sandblast the hull below the waterline.

Again it took another full day to prep.

Whilst the boys were painting and priming, we took out the sails and took them over to the rigging lawn to inspect them. We have to decided to keep a few and have a few new ones made.

Then the blasting began. It was very loud and very messy. There was a cloud of dust so thick in the shed that you couldn’t see the back wall.

The setup outside was big and they used 2.5 tonnes of garnet to sand back the entire hull.

It only took about 4 hours to complete and then Pete went around with the small sand blaster to do the more intricate spots around the rudder and propellor.

It then took an intense couple of hours to sweep the bulk of the garnet up, carefully take the blankets of and shake them out and return into place and finally bow down Lorelei’s deck area and sweep the entire shed out.

The blankets on the deck were covered up to 50mm thick in garnet. It was a mess!!

They quickly air blasted the hull clean and had the 3 coats of primer onto the hull all within 3 hours of the sandblasting being completed.

The timing was critical so air didn’t have time to oxidize the freshly blasted steel before it was painted and sealed.

During this time we removed the rear swim platform and had Ricky from CLR fabrications son Rohan (who was on school holidays) come in for a few days to help Paul sand back the timber decking, polish the stainless-steel surrounds and do a complete clean and polish of Lorelei’s tender, our 4m tinny called Fandangler.

Then on the Friday and Saturday they blew the shed clean, re-masked the bottom and carefully taped the topsides and sealed the shed completed closed.

Then Bear did the final topcoat to the hull by doing 3 coats Friday morning and arvo and Saturday morning.

We were advised not to be there as they didn’t want anyone rear the hull during the final and critical stage, so we packed up and went to Lisa’s brothers house on the Sunshine Coast.

Whilst down there we went to a bedding shop to get 2 x custom mattresses (which lay side by side and are mirror reverse of each other) for our master bedroom.

After a lot of discussion and trying the beds we finally decided on a style and paid the $3500 upfront as requested.

We offered to give them the existing mattresses as a template but they said they wouldn’t need it and the diagram I gave them was fine.

Well to cut a long story very short the promised it to be completed in 2 weeks and it was done in only 10 days so Paul want back down to pick them up only to find the dimensions and the shape wrong.

Paul was not happy and the factory in Brisbane was assuring both Paul and the sales lady that the measurements were correct.

The sales lady had taken a photo of the design on her phone so she also knew it was not right.

They promised to send staff from the factory to the sunshine coast store the next day to soft it out but couldn’t guarantee a delivery to Bundaberg which was 500km away.

So we rang the next day to find out the outcome of the factory staff visit and were very rudely told by a sales lady (that we had never met or spoken too) that we were the rudest customers that the staff have ever dealt with and we were not welcomed back into the store ever again and they were giving us a refund!!!!

The say we were shock was an understatement.

We had a great initial meeting with the staff, happily pay the money upfront and was not angry to the staff on the day of the stuff up despite Paul being mucked around.

We wasted 2 days and 2000km of driving down and back twice with this company.

So if you read this we would highly recommend you DO NOT ever buy from the Simply Beds company.

Went we got back to Lorelei from the Sunshine Coast it was like the great unveiling. We had never even opened the paint tin so we had no idea what the hull colour was going to be like. We really didn’t want it to be like a battleship grey and look like a warship so we were very excited to see the warm grey colour that looked just about right. It wasn’t too light or too dark and the hue was good so we were very happy.

Over the next 4 days we let the paint cure and harden and used that time to use the scissor lifts to polish all the stainless steel on the boat.

Its such a labour intensive job to do and its not fun doing it in the sun so the sheds shade was a welcome relief.

We also used the scissor lift to polish the davits and remove the wind generator and service, blast, paint and put back up.

Its normally so hard to get up to the solar panels and wind generator as its over 6m high to the solar and over 8m to the wind generator from the ground level.

The staff at the marina were very careful and put new plastic sheeting over the travi-lift slings when the moved Lorelei out of the shed and back into her spot in the hardstand area.

Once back out in the hardstand area we had to do one little extra sandblast on the front deck. We tried to simply sand the new stainless-steel section around the anchor winch and paint it, but the paint peeled off (Paul was not happy...) so we asked Bear to do a quick blast of the stainless and the paint then adhered much better.

7

Only 2 days later the Quin Rig crew of Jesse, Will and Vasco turned up again to put the masts back up.

The crane that was ordered was unavailable so the send the next size up.

It was huge and probably could’ve lifted Lorelei up up off the ground.

The extended height reach did help though as the main mast is 20m tall from the ground level and the mizzen is set a long way back from where the crane had to sit out the front of Lorelei’s bow.

It was Paul’s birthday that day and he was pretty nervous, but the boys are very professional and it all went very smoothly.

Once the crane left after lunch, they did take about another 4-5 hours to finely tune the rig to make the tensions on all the stays just right.

Poor Will went up and down the masts over a dozen times in his bosuns chair.

Thank goodness Jesse had a large Makita power drill to winch him up each time.

The next morning they swaged the new inner forestay for our new third furling headsail.

In the last week of the exterior refit, we got Richard who is the local sailmaker/upholsterer to make some new covers for our scuba compressor box, deck winches, kayaks, liferaft and hatches.

He also did some interior work and made new covers for our dining area, settees in the bedroom and saloon and a new seat in the internal helm area.

 

We also managed to give our kayaks clean and brought some good quality second-hand stand-up paddleboards.

We have also lined up Ricky from CLR Fabrications to make the new solid hardtop for our internal cockpit area.

So for now, we are having a break as it rains and Cyclone Alfred causes havoc in the area.

Once the rains stop and the temperature cools then we will tackle part 2 of the outside area which is the mainly the hardtop and some other stainless-steel work, purchasing 2 new outboards and getting some new sails made and sail-bags installed, etc… 

Then it's onto the interior for a spring clean, some painting, a new toilet room overhaul and the electronics and electrical upgrade.

Hopefully that should only take about 8-12 weeks and then we are good to splash and start cruising again.

Cheers for now

Paul and Lisa Hogger

Almost back on board Yacht Lorelei