Gibraltar and Boatwork

It seemed like we'd never make our way out of the Atlantic, and the difficulty in finding even decent weather windows or non-huge seas (much less the constant semi-panic state of watching behind us for orcas to attack)... so it goes without saying that pulling into Gibraltar felt like a massive accomplishment!

That accomplishment of course was rewarded with - a lot of work, but more on that later. ;)

Look, we know most people picture buying a brand new boat as the moment where everything gets easy. Champagne. Sunset sails. Sleeping in beautiful anchorages.

We've been at this long enough to know that simply isn't the case, but I'd also be lying if I didn't tell you this leg of the journey has been a taxing one for us.

Reality simply looks a little different.

For us, it's looked like big seas and gnarly weather, combined with simply being cold ALL the time. No doubt it will all be worth it, but still... it's been a lot.

Now we finally pull in for a break and, instead of local exploration and celebration, it looks like sawdust, wiring diagrams, frozen fingers, and six straight weeks of crawling around in the bilge.

The reality of boatlife... right?

Gib is officially a part of the UK (though currently trying to figure out how to merge more with the euro because they share borders with Spain and Portugal. In fact... the border with spain is literally the tarmac of the airport runway. To visit spain (as you probably guessed - for tapas/tacos) we walked from the marina to the airport and scurried across the runway in between planes approaching - that's a first!

We had made a reservation at a marina, pulled in and tied alongside the concrete wall at the entrance as directed. This has seemed fairly normal for European marinas as a check-in procedure, but it slowly sank in that they intended for us to stay there - for our entire visit. We did our best to arrange every fender we had (and some of theirs) but also knew big weather was coming and could see that there was nothing to stop the swell/waves from coming directly at us and slamming us against that wall.

Jen hopped on the phone and did some quick work/made some magic happen by - sweet talking her way into a spot in the other marina. In fact we simply got lucky with timing as they were completely full when we had called earlier, but a boat had decided last minute to leave early hoping to beat the weather out of Gib.
Huge sigh of relief, and the weather over the next few days left zero doubt we had made the right decision - Karma most certainly would have been damaged or destroyed tied to that wall, even if one of us never left the boat simply to man the fenders at all times.

Our eventual spot at Ocean Village Marina felt 100% protected and turned out to be perfect on many levels.

All in - we had hoped/planned to be in Gib for a week or two. It somehow turned into 6 weeks of waiting on parts, working on projects and trying to make improvements.
Our project list going into Gib was:
- Lithium battery system
- Solar
Seems easy enough right?
Somewhere along the line things changed a bit.

First because we're tired of freezing - so we decided to add a Mabru 12v AC unit (which also has a heater), similar to those we've used, tested and trusted in the vans for years now. Secondly (and this is likely our biggest mistake) we decided while trying to rip out enough structure under our guest berth to install the lithium system... to simply rip out the entire guest berth and add/convert it into a workshop. I know. I know.

Why would you rip apart a brand new (and frankly beautiful) boat?
You're not wrong. In fact, it would have been awesome if you'd asked the question earlier and saved us a TON of work! Truth be told we really wanted (and begged for) a workshop to be installed from the factory - but it simply wasn't an option in the already short timeline from the factory, especially for a new model like the Excess13.

Turns out we hadn't even finished moving in before we were carrying pieces of our brand new boat down the dock. Most people buy new things so they don't have to renovate them. Apparently... we're not most people.

Two key lessons quickly developed out of the process of ripping our berth apart.
1. Excess clearly takes very seriously building boats that are solid and won't squeak in even the roughest of conditions. As a designer/builder of living spaces inside rugged offroad vehicles - I can appreciate the difficulty and am seriously impressed at how VERY difficult this disassembly was (even once equipped with screwdrivers, saws and hammers/mallets in hand)!
2. I am absolutely getting too old for this. Or better stated - I AM too old for this.
Spending all day every day in the bildge, contorting into awkward yoga poses to find hidden screws and fighting against sika (a very permanent adhesive used quite liberally during install) broke me on an almost daily basis.

Lucky for us, Ocean Village Marina in Gibraltar happens to be one of the only marinas on the planet that not only has nice toilet/shower facilities, it also has a few luxury bathtubs (built for 2). This ammenity saved us, quite literally. A nice long soak at the end of each day (both to warm up the frozen extremities and to somewhat heal/reset the body) became our daily ritual - which was also much needed as the gloomy skies and towering cliffs prevented our typical ritual of watching the sunset.

Honestly, those bathtubs became our daily reset button.

Every evening we'd limp the short walk from the boat, soak until we could feel our fingers again, sip a gin and tonic, exchange and laugh over foot rubs about whatever impossible thing we'd fought that day.

Some marinas are memorable because of the location or the crowd there when you are. Gibraltar might always be memorable because it had the facilities for long hot soaks.

Overall, our time in Gib was a success. A busy city for sure but by the end felt more like a small town. Duty free was a bonus, but delivering anything here was far harder (and often simply impossible) than we expected. We did make friends and potentially new business partners (in the van world and/or boat world... time will tell) and if you happen to be getting boatwork done (or need a van built) in Gib let us know so we can make some recommendations!

We only ended up with one AC install completed due to delivery timelines, but the boat officially has heat (meaning we can officially live on her without a marina/power grid), and the lithium/electrical install and solar install went to near perfection thanks to the team at EMS.

We originally planned to do this install on our own, but when adding up the costs of tools/components we don't have and couldn't find easy access to - having a partner in Gib saved us on many levels (including costs), yet still allowed us to design/layout the system as we wanted and to test out some new products components - like our CIGS solar panels (which, if they continue testing as well as they have so far may also find their way into our van builds!)!

While we still have to put her through her paces, Karma is now not only an incredible sailing vessel - she is now an incredibly comfortable offgrid liveaboard adventure powerhouse (which if you've been following along for a while, you know our lifestyle very much requires).

We will do a more thorough write up on this (and all other projects/upgrades) later on, but in brief, we added 1840ah of lithium, a complete charging system (including backup/redundancies) and added 1460w of walkable CIGS solar to the 1275w of bifacial panels over the davit (for a total of 2735w). We built the boat without a genset, and while we originally planned on upgrading the alternators - based on how fast we top of the batteries may not even need to do so. Love it!

We also added (started adding... this project's not yet complete) ambient lighting. While the boat is very well lit from the factory, we also love/prefer a softer glow, so we swapped out the outdoor strip lights with RGBW and added small RGB accent lights at the floor/steps for maximum maneuverability while underway (or as needed for a dance party celebration once on anchor).

Unfortunatelty, the new workshop project remains very, very far from completion as I well. Turns out we vastly, grossly, hugely underestimated the difficulty of sourcing components for cabinetry, much less tools and other hardware - and don't even get me started on the difficulty of trying to do finish carpentry on a moving object.

Honestly, I need to keep reminding my perfectionist brain that the entire point of this was to prototype the thing so that if others want a similar upgrade we could help them make it happen... but wow am I exhausted and ready to move on/be back to enjoying life on the water rather than working life at the dock.

Somewhere along the way I realized I'd (once again) quietly crossed the line between building/working on the boat and leaving zero room to enjoy it or our surroundings. Old habits die hard.

To that end - we're moving on.
Technically we likely/probably shoudn't until things are further along... but honestly as soon as the solar was down/plugged in, the Sika was cured and everything was both watertight and functional we walked immediately into the marina office and gave them notice of our departure (en route to the bathtub, with gin and tonics in hand - of course).