Beowulf has been good to us in the maintenance department – she really requires very little in the way of our attention. But it has been a year since she got a good going over, and since we’re sitting in Newport, RI waiting on new sails, awnings, and some upholstery work, it has been maintenance week.

Of course nothing has triggered this rush to get our hands dirty. But the minute we made up a list, well, things just started happening.

Take the fridge compressor which has been making odd noises for six months or so. Last Friday there was a screech from the engine room. Upon investigation we found one of the two compressors locked up. OK, we’ve been expecting it and have a spare compressor. The exchange took less than an hour, but in the process of the change out we found the bronze vibration isolators (which isolate the motion of the compressors from the fixed plumbing parts) were a little worn. A twist this way and that to check it further precipitated a leak. So now we have to find replacements and braze them in place. Of course we’ll do both compressors as we assume the other set are ready to go to. Better to do it now than sitting in the islands.

Then there’s the galley faucet. Would you believe it has started to leak?!? Probably just an “O” ring, but we’ve got to tear it down and make a trip to the harware store. And the mixer valve for our shower forward starting leaking last night too!

On the positive side, in the process of cleaning the engine room we found that the pressure gauges on the hydraulic steering system both had tiny leaks. That’s an easy fix. We replaced them with pipe plugs.

We’ve been giving the running rigging a check too. Both our jib sheets and main/mizzen halyards have now had 28,000 miles of wear on them in addition to four years or so of sunlight. So we pulled them all (the halyards are 2-1 so there’s a splice at the masthead) for inspection,and then decided to end-for-end them – i.e., bring the masthead splice down to the deck and take the old tail from deck level to the masthead. However, upon cutting open the old splices, the Spectra looked none the worse for the miles or time – amazing material for running rigging!

There are a few other things left to do. Our watermaker membranes have small leaks on the high pressure side. Just an annoying drip, but we’ll probably have to reseat the end caps. Genset and engine will be due for oil/filter changes, our mast boot seals need to be redone (they are currently maintaining their watertight integrity with a boost from a roll of duct tape), and the hatch gaskets are due for replacement. Nothing leaks right now – but with the time these materials have been outside it is probably better to do the R and R before we start getting serious water on deck.

That leaves our deck winches and windlass – all of which are due for a cleaning and lubrication. They all work fine – and the way to keep them happy is to stay ahead of the gunk buildup inside.

The exciting part of getting Beowulf ready to cruise are our new main and mizzen. The present sails look amazingly good after all the miles – they are original equipment. But they are starting to show their age and as big as these sails are, with just two of us aboard we cannot afford to be fighting to get a broken sail down in a gale. When Dan Neri designed these sails they were state of the art. But that was two Whitbread and two America’s Cup cycles ago, and a lot has been learned about designing fully roached sails since then. Dan is back at work now at North Sails and from the design data he’s shown us we expect to see significant improvement in performance – we’ll know for sure in a few days.