Sailing Saoirse - Our cursed bimini and our new member (EP 15)

Meet our newest member and see what has been keeping us busy for the last 8 months! We couldn’t possibly portray the utter heart ache and disappointment we have experienced over the last 3 months with this Bimini. Our work on this bimini started in July 2019 while we were still working on it at the previous owners home. It was then transported to club Mykonos when we put Saoirse in the water, we had great intentions of getting her finished ASAP. With great difficulty and lots of back and forth between different companies and people we decided to hand the work over to a local guy in Langebaan. OUR BIGGEST MISTAKE. We needed the Bimini to be fared and painted before we could put it up. It took a lot of sanding to get the fiberglass as even as possible and as smooth as possible after that we went on to employ “Patrick” at the end of November/beginning of December he promised the work could be done and he was fully able to complete it with great results - he needed a deposit to secure his work and then he would start the following week, the day after he was handed his deposit he disappeared ( he had been working on a boat in the boat yard for weeks before ) into thin air. He wouldn’t answer his phone or reply to messages, after a month of trying we thought it was time to give up on the guy. Suddenly he appeared at the end of December promising that he was starting the work the first week of January, we geared up for him and had all the supplies couriered to us from Cape Town only to be let down AGAIN. Patrick disappeared, again taking no calls or replying to messages. By this time we were fed up and Karen messaged him and said she’s had enough of his promises and she would be finding someone else to do the work - to this he quickly called back and promised he would get back to work he was just unwell. EVENTUALLY he pitched up in the middle of February and said he could get the job done - he sprayed the paint on so thick that it got orange peel and he ran out of paint so there was more money having to be plowed into the job. He then completed the job in 4 days and presented us with possibly the worlds worst fairing and paint job imagined to mankind. Disheartened and ready to throw in the towel on the entire Bimini at this stage he came back to us and told us that he could fix it but would need to be paid even more on top of what he had been paid to complete the job. To that we said goodbye to Patrick and tackled the Bimini as a family - it couldn’t possibly get worse that what it was. With lots of attention to detail and having to dish out more money for more paint and fairing materials we got to this final product. We couldn’t have asked for a better job if we do say so ourselves! It did take us 3 weeks with Colben and Karen working on it almost full time and Robin and Teagan helping between their own projects and eventually the help of Denver when he arrived. We did it, we finally did it! There were tears (when we say tears we mean torrential downpour kind of tears) sweat and some blood. We then had to wait a whole week for some good weather so we could hoist the Bimini up and put her on! Join us in our next episode to see what she looks like on Saoirse.