Oh boy, it's winter again

This weekend we have finally prepared our joy for the winter months. Almost everything, including the sails, battery, clothing and so on is stored at home to keep them dry. Then I poured a little bleach into the water tank and flushed the hoses. Then I've removed all the water from the hoses and the tank and cleaned the water tank via the inspection hole. This is essential to keep it clean because after one year of use there was a nice junk. I would strongly warn anyone against the flexible water tanks, because you cannot clean them!

The first thing is to jack the trailer and put it on the concrete blocks to ease the axles.

concrete blocks to lift the trailer and ease the axles

Then raised the mast a little and added the wooden A frame to support the mast in case of heavy show and finally wired the line netting from side to side to prevent water collection on the tarp.

additional mast support

bow mast support bar

32mm plastic pipe tee to prevent tarp chafing from the stanchions

Then I leave the forward hatch slightly open to let it breathe with the bug screen to avoid bee's nests in the cabin.

One word about the tarp. This is very heavy tarp used on truck trailers which is very durable, but a bit struggle to put it on. Still in a good shape after ~8 years I own it since I bought our first sailboat.

So now it's time to rest and buy some new marine stuff for the Xmas :-)