SERENITY NOW

  30th Nov 2020 (Crete) Another ‘not sailing’ diary entry..  We’re back in Agios Nikolaos again for the winter, and once again find ourselves locked down as the Covid pandemic continues. Thankfully not many cases on Crete at the moment, and only one or two recorded in our region.  Days are lazy, I’m half way through the rudder bearing repair - still waiting for UPS to deliver the required parts which have been stalled in Athens for the last week.  Right now it’s just coming up to 10am, Chez is dozing next to me after being awake and reading the papers at 8 ish.  The other occupant of our bed is the delightful little cat who’s calling our boat home for the winter - variously called ‘little grey’ ‘wolfie’ or my favourite; ‘little love’ - she’s a gorgeous little purr box who delights in paddling and curling up as close as possible to us in our ‘nooks’ We had Carl and Jen over for bangers and mash last night - that, some creme brûlée’s and 4 bottles of red wine made for a fun night

  5th Nov 2020 (Crete) After struggling through the back end of the summer season trying to turn an ever stiffening helm on our 1995 SO451 - and developing arm muscles like Popeye in the process (nice for me, not so for Chez), we finally decided that enough was enough, and I really should have a look at those dreaded rudder bearings... There’s a lot written online about the less than perfect design, the crosspiece with a propensity to rust and the swelling/shrinking of various bearing materials. So instead of covering old ground, I thought I’d share the fun and games I’ve had during the repair. I’d done a fair bit of research before getting started. I’d trawled numerous online forum posts, read the Jeanneau tech bulletins and reached out to; Jeanneau service (who’s not overly helpful reply was from a bot telling me to ‘contact a dealer’ in French and English) The previous owner (who’d braved the same process in 2012) A helpful Danish couple who’d posted their repair on