My new Aventura has been moved into a marina and while work continues on board she is now starting to look like a finished boat.
The long wait came to an end this afternoon when we stepped onboard with Gwenda and had a chance to have a proper look at the almost finished Aventura.
The helm station had been ergonomically planned with all controls within easy reach: twin electric motor controls and gauges, two electric winches, main autopilot and emergency backup controls.
The nav station turned out even better than I had imagined, with a large Brookes & Gatehouse Zeus multifunction display and all essential controls at hand.
The owner’s cabin, in the starboard hull, looks certainly larger than I had expected, especially as I’ll have it all to myself.
The forward crew cabin shares the same hull.
My basic crew for the forthcoming voyage will have the portside hull to themselves: Conor and Taylor the aft guest cabin…
… and Michalis the forward cabin. It also has an extra folding bunk in preparation for the time when, I hope, the entire Cornell clan will cruise together and we’ll need every available bunk to fit us all in.
All rigged with its rotating mast, synthetic rigging, self-tacking jib and all halyards in place for next week’s sail trials, I went to the bottom of the mast looking for a suitable place to insert the traditional old coin to bring us luck on our challenging voyage. Instead I almost fell into the trampoline when I saw at the foot of the mast this:
Having suffered all my life countless references to my Dracula connections due to my Transylvanian origins, I thought that someone at the boatyard had decided to play this trick on me. But no, this was no joke. This high-tech mast was built in Brasov, where I grew up, by a company called Axxon Composites, and Dracula Spars is indeed their trade mark!
So no ancient coin, but a clove of garlic instead!
