After a few weeks of celebrating the holidays, sailing, surfing, and snorkeling along the south coast of Tahiti, it was time for a haul-out. Five years of expedition sailing and use meant Aldeb-aran was in need of repairs, servicing, paint, and some TLC. We sailed up the coast to Pape’ete to Technimarine boatyard, where their 300 ton capacity travel lift pulled Aldebaran out of the water and onto the hard.
We were ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work. The pro-ject list was long, but the main objectives included (but were not limited to):
• Repair keel damage inflicted by a less than ideal lift (i.e. a tractor) during an emergency haul-out in the Marquesas to repair damage to the wings that occurred during the pas-sage from the Galapagos to Pitcairn.
• Reinforce the wings by bolting to the frame (fiberglass tabs would come later, once we were back in the water)
• Complete fiberglass repairs to the hull, topsides, and rud-der.
• Replace thru-hulls (we can’t decide which we enjoyed replacing more: the thru-hull to the head or the raw water intake).
• Replace flax in packing glands (prop and rudder)
• Sand and prep the hull and topsides for new antifouling and topside paint.
• Paint Bottom and Topsides (the last of the paint was ap-plied from approximately 12am to 6am on the morning of our splash!).
Aldebaran in the slings and Kimber smiling before she realized what she was getting herself into!
There is no way around it, being in the boatyard is not easy. Brutal heat, mosquitoes, deafening noise from forklifts and grinding metal, dust, and intermittent squalls of wind and side-ways rain challenged us to the brink of breakdown. In the midst of our repair work, plans were also shifting with the fu-ture of Aldebaran. Kristian and Sabrina were expecting twins, and in the process of buying a catamaran that would be better suited for their growing family.
In light of these circumstances, it was more sensible to put Aldebaran on the market, and with that, Kristian proposed that we purchase the boat and become partners in the Green Coco-nut Run. Could we pull together enough resources to make it happen and open the door to living our dream of sailing and exploring the world? It felt like a stretch. It also felt serendipi-tous. In a leap of faith, with sweat on our brows and paint on our clothes, we said yes! We all scrambled to get the boat pro-jects done before our time in the boatyard expired, details ne-gotiated in the sale and joining forces in the co-op, and proper paperwork signed before Kristian’s flight back to California.
Despite a few sleepless nights and still having holes in the boat (replacing thru-hulls can be frustrating!) a few hours before we were scheduled to go back in the water, we miraculously made it all happen! We finished in time for our 7am splash, and now we know every inch and detail of Aldebaran!