Son James comes over to get the lovely, little boat back on her feet again after near sinking and severe damage in the last typhoon. I am old, stiff, rib damaged and generally poor at manual things. James is young, supple and amazingly good at manual things of all varieties.

This post will be essentially narrative free. There is far too much to write about. We have had ten days of restoring the boat in blazing sun and torrential thunderstorms. You will have to get the gist through lots of photos, videos and runic captions. It has been the best fun!

We take the boat out of the water and set to a major clean and refurbishing.

Once the grime, seaweed, shells and crabs are removed we move the boat away from the lifts to get on with the work.

The plan is to strip out all the rotted wood, slide a copper tube down the middle of the mast as a central support, loads of epoxy mixed with sawdust and finally a titanium or maybe gold sheath.

One of the strands of the forestay has unravelled. Oh dear, I need a new forestay with eye splices at each end. Kiyuna san turns up with a good length of perfect wire cable that he had hanging around. Next day a man called Teru san shows up to make a new forestay!

Kiyuna san repacks the stern gland. This is a job that I have failed at over the years but Kiyuna san makes mincemeat of it. We have a hilarious trip around Naha boat shops trying to locate packing rope.

I still have to replace the halyards. I need a new jib and jib furling system. We have to epoxy and sheath the mast head. It will get done.

So, many thanks to Kiyuna san and all the other Okinawan boat people who have been invaluable. Above all thanks to James who spent a 2 week vacation sweating it out in a scorching Okinawan boatyard. Maybe I could start an adventure holiday business.