2018 started with some pretty cold and wild weather so after making a new mount to raise the radar antenna by 20cm above the wheelhouse roof, the jobs moved indoors. We want to insulate the wheelhouse roof and we didn’t want the radar antenna to be buried in insulation which could degrade its performance.

Lawrence laid the rustic Belgium oak floor for the new kitchen in the aft area, Lorna then filled, sanded and oiled it to produced a beautiful finish ready for us to build the new kitchen.

As summer approached Lawrence set to chipping, wire brushing and painting the port side deck, the Stbd side still looked good from last year’s painting. We keep trying different makes of paint in an attempt to find one that lasts more than a couple of years before rust gets through. This year we have Vactan (a rust curer), Metaclor primer, then 2x Cumar Suregrip for top coat. The Suregrip is heavily laden with sharp sand to provide the grip so we’ll see how that goes.

Lawrence races with the DYC using borrowed sailing dinghies while he decides what make to buy. Hadron kindly delivered an orange demo Hadron H2 for a weekend for Lawrence to try and it sailed brilliantly and the photo shows Lawrence leading the fleet away from the line at one of the starts. It is a lovely design with a great design for mast and sail so we just have to see if we can bring ourselves to spend up to 10 thousands on a sailing dinghy!

We finally bought an early Hadron from 2016 and Lawrence enjoyed some cool winter sailing.