I've been on the boat now for more than 10 days and what action-packed days they were! Kincsem had a lot of work done over the winter by Amel on warranty, including both masts and booms being repainted and the interior wood work being refreshed in various places. And then I had ordered a number of repairs and improvements, including a new AC compressor, new, more powerful solar panels, a new seacock for a direct drain for the galley sink (as an alternative to draining into the bilge), an induction stove instead of gas and a bunch of smaller things. So I needed to make sure that all was done properly but then I probably had something like 100 additional points to work off myself to commission the boat properly.

On the first day back, my work list grew a lot. And the new points were mostly points that I couldn't tackle myself - I needed various service providers here in La Rochelle to spring into action and deal with them - pronto. Most seriously, the water maker didn't work because the low pressure pump was frozen.

The frozen low pressure pump for the water maker

Getting a new pump from Italy in time for the scheduled departure seemed like a challenge, given that it had taken months to get the new AC compressor from Italy. Without a 240l/hour water maker, the nature of cruising on Kincsem changes significantly! And then the installation of the new drain for the galley sink was not finished, neither was the installation of the new induction cooker - it gimballed only to starboard .... And the new AC compressor was also not installed (I didn't yet know that the salt waker pump for the AC also needed to get overhauled....) Unfortunately, I arrived on the Easter weekend and in France, that is a long weekend that includes the Monday, leaving only 4 business days in the first week and 5 business days in the next week, with a scheduled departure the following weekend. So I was a bit worried that it would take some time to get things going and time might be too short to get the boat ready on schedule!

Well, I shouldn't have worried because everyone was extremely responsive and I had a lot of people working on the boat in the first few days. And the new pump took only 3 days to get here! I also did make a lot of progress on the original 100 or so points and tested all systems and everything seems to be in order. But of course additional problems popped up, like the outboard for the dinghy not shutting down when you pull off the key. But I'm confident we'll get that sorted before the weekend. Both Christoph and Achim arrived as well and we went for a sail today to test things in reality. All was well so we'll be ok to depart on time on Saturday after a big shopping run tomorrow!