The Walkthrough - Dulcinea

So more updates on repairs and works. I had a call from lloyd a few days ago saying there were some other things of somewhat alarming interest and would I have a chance to get up to Havelock and meet with him to go through the latest findings. After talking to Emma I called him back the following day and said we would head up saturday morning and meet around lunchtime.
We left Christchurch about five to eight in the morning and arrived about half twelve, met Lloyd and he left us to have a look around for a bit while he grabbed a bite to eat. It was weird seeing her out of the water again, and especially in the state she is, its not bad but she has plenty of 'battle scars' where little patches of osmosis have been ground out, filled and are waiting to be sanded. Other parts where seveal millimeters of solid glass have been ground off to allow for new glass to be laid to reinforce areas where some bizarre joins were found or a bit of delamination happened. Anyhow thats all old news now...he met with us after lunch and we started going through the new things, the biggest new development was that of the prop shaft. The one fitted is bent (only by 12 thousands of an inch) but enough to vibrate and wear things it shouldn't so we are up for a new one. The sleeving through the hull for the shaft is stainless which is a no no apparantly and it should be fibreglass so that needs to be somehow removed (easier said than done) and a new bit fitted and glassed in. Cutless bearing and support needs replacing, new support inside the boat for the shaft needs to be built to support the long shaft. And back to the shaft, the old one is 1 1/8 inch while all parts available for shafts here in NZ are for 1 1/4 inch, also a new shaft seal will be installed (and I also found out that water shouldn't leak into the bilge which will be very novel!) so its just a bit of a drama all round but this whole thing but its going to be so much better when done and remove that horrible knocking noise when we used to motor.
Onto the next thing, wires in the engine bay...all sorts of crazy going on, main cables with broken outer sheath and corroded internal copper wire, its amazing anything worked at all. Old engine and battery switches need replacing. Fuel lines need replacing, fuel filler hose is going to get replaced at my request to remove the join in the pipe and remove the very slow fuel leak.
Main bilge will be drained and keel bolts checked to try find ingress of water, although slow its not good and can cause serious corrosion to keel bolts, and if they fail it doesn't take a genius to work out what will happen.
Rear hatch to be replaced with something that doesn't resemble the watertightness of a sieve, morse cable for gearbox shifter to be replaced finally after having a couple of repairs.
I think thats about it for now, all I can think is how have things not spectacularly failed long before now, we must have been sailing on a prayer! the things that could have gone wrong boggle the mind, I am just so thankful we have made it to port safely each time until now...I am starting to see the end to this work and hopefully many many years of trouble free cruising ahead. The countdown to relaunch begins, he thinks about a month of work so by the end of August we should be back in the water with a much safer and improved boat.