It's a common saying on the water - there's no such thing as a five minute job aboard a boat. This offhand quip was to almost engulf us as we prepared Keri's racing boat, Rumour, for her upcoming Atlantic crossing.

When Freya and Harris - Keri's daughter and her partner - arrived in Arzal, Pays de la Loire, France, they hadn't quite anticipated the level of work Rumour would be requiring. Indeed, on the hard, spartan inside, and in need of lots of work, she was quite the project.

Worse still for Freya and Harris, expecting to leave northern France for warmer climes within four or five days, they hadn't packed at all for the rapidly decreasingly temperatures of September and October. It was to be a challenging few weeks, that was for sure.

They worked incredibly hard to get the boat off the hard, launched, and manoeuvred to her marina berth, which is where I first lay eyes on her.

I had originally booked a flight to Lagos to meet Rumour and her crew in Portugal - but the substantial amount of work required meant they hadn't even left Arzal when I had been due to land at Faro airport. Accordingly, plans therefore changed - I would instead fly out to Nantes to aid with the refit before sailing all the way from France: across the Bay of Biscay, around Cape Finisterre, and due south to Lagos with Freya, Harris, and Keri.

From the moment I landed in Nantes, long days of boat refitting commenced. While initially hesitant to get involved with the bigger jobs, I soon became comfortable with the refit initiative, and got stuck in!

Fitting new water tanks and reinstalling a new heads were some of my projects, amongst other, smaller jobs. Installing the water tanks was entirely simple - until I misjudged where to drill the filler cap, upon which my drill bit chewed its way through a bulkhead. Eek!

Luckily, Keri was very understanding and we worked to fill the old hole with epoxy and to redrill the filler cap. Crisis averted - and the mantra 'measure twice, cut once' was duly embedded into my consciousness.

The heads installation, on the other hand, was to be more of a challenge - and would remain an ongoing and frustrating project in the pursuing weeks.

It's hard to express the number of projects we all got stuck into - and the number of challenges we were to be faced with. Even simple jobs like installing new reef lines became a major, day-consuming project where the gooseneck rivets had to be drilled out and the boom removed, to deal with internal fittings. The reef-line debacle came to embody the '1 step forward, 2 steps backward' feeling, which was always there at the back of our minds.

Originally planning to leave Arzal marina on Wednesday 28th October, departure day was pushed back to Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday. Jobs continued to pile up, and, even with all the crew working at 110%, progress felt sluggish. At the time, it felt like Rumour was fighting us, but looking back, the number of setbacks was not surprising.

Over a six-month period, the setbacks would have been expected - but because our refit was so compressed, it felt like every step of the way was a fighting match with the boat.

Finally though, we left the marina on Sunday, 1st of November, with spirits high... for about thirty seconds.

Despite booking our space in the lock  - you must lock out of Arzal marina - other boats hadn't, and had pushed in front. As we motored toward the lock, the gates shut before our eyes. And the worst part? There wasn't another scheduled lock potentially until Tuesday. The words uttered from the deck of Rumour can't be reprinted here - but they effectively amounted to, 'oh bother.'

Tying up to the waiting pontoon with spirits at record-low levels, Keri headed to the lock office to express his, ahem, discontent to the lock officers. Once our 'bother' had been duly expressed, the lock keepers - a touch flustered, one has to imagine - made another lock happen. Scheduled lock or not, we were through!

Once through the lock, we tied to the pontoon on the other side, and began the final jobs - inserting battens into sails, putting the main onto the boom, and consolidating spares and tools. We were very lucky to be helped out by Danielle, with whom the refit would likely have fallen apart without. She brought us hot dinner and hot drinks, and took all our excess tools and spares home.

The waiting pontoon on which we were tied up to didn't technically allow access to the mainland. But with a borrowed ladder off a fishing boat, a little bit of parkour, and some fence hopping, we were able to access terra firma, making tool extraction for Danielle much easier.

With most jobs done, we were able to leave the waiting pontoon the following day, and headed down the Vilaine estuary. Low on depth and on a falling tide, we carefully negotiated the shoals and finally reached the sea - we all felt a sense of relief escaping to open water. Spotting a Jeanneau Sun 2000 on the Vilaine I'm sure was a good luck charm, too.

Despite our relief, though, of escaping the Vilaine, we knew some jobs remained uncompleted, and we headed to a beach anchorage (La Plage de Mine d'Or: Goldmine beach) to finally finish the refit: an exciting prospect. 

I had spliced the anchor chain to the warp as we motored (sidenote: very proud of my splice!), and fed out the anchor. A slight deflating feeling to have halted progress so soon after starting, but it was still good to be at sea - sort of.

We cracked on with jobs - I had to disassemble the heads as it continued to both leak and not pump. Something was clearly blocked, and after about four hours of grimy troubleshooting, I discovered our issue. While the inlet pipes had been replaced, I had chosen not to replace the 38mm outlet pipe, and upon inspection discovered it was fully blocked up, not by anything too grim but, in a bizarre twist, wood chipping-like material.

Upon reflection, Keri worked out rodents had nested in the piping when stored in the garage, and this was the source of our leak. Obviously, we had no way to unblock the 2.2m of pipe, so retired the heads for the moment.

To make matters worse, we then were unable to find a bag of blocks, cleats, and low friction rings we required to set off southbound. We realised, once the boat had been turned upside-down looking for this bag of spares, it must have been confused with the unnecessary spares and taken by Danielle back to Keri's house.

A quick video call with Danielle confirmed our mistake - and so a plan was formulated, for Danielle to drive to the beach and for Keri to paddleboard and collect the all-important bits. A successful pick-up night operation ensued, and while it was now dark (reminder: Monday 6th November) we were able to sleep at anchor, enjoy dinner and the snacks - and more importantly, beer - Danielle had very kindly brought us.

Tuesday beckoned, and we had a productive day and prepared to set off that evening. But, the motif of setback after setback - guess what - continued.

While Harris and Freya paddledboarded to the beach to find toilets for the supposed final time until Spain, Keri and I made final preparations for sea, and we ran the engine to charge the batteries. However, a check of the battery monitor showed all was not well with the battery charging system, and actually showed discharge, not the charging expected.

A phone call with Olivier, a marine electrician Keri knew from Arzal, confirmed the issue, and we arranged to meet one of his team in a marina just south of the anchorage the next day. Frustrating!

The next morning beckoned (Tuesday), and, with the anchor hauled up, we set off south to the port of La Turballe. We were able to hoist the main and J3, and flew towards the marina. There were teething issues, with reef2 clearly tangled internally, but apart from that, all appeared well onboard. We made it to the marina, thundering along at seven knots, reaching along, and met one of Olivier's team.

While Keri and the marine electrician diagnosed and sorted the issue, Harris, Freya, and I headed to the supermarket to stock up. We stocked up on food for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners at sea, as well as numerous snacks. We had originally planned to leave the marina that night, but it was soon apparent that wouldn't be happening, and so we 'enjoyed' another night moored up.

We'd had issues with the AIS transponder, noticed by watchers from afar, and so I broke out the soldering iron and inspected cable connections and the aerial - the VSWR value was almost 7:1, when it should've been below 3:1 at least. My soldering improved it down to 4:1 (remaining high as we didn't have a new plug to replace it with), but the AIS remained unhappy - though while diagnostics threw up these issues, we were still on marine traffic and receiving other boats - and so we left it for now.

A late night chat that evening caused Keri to realise he had left his sextant at home. Once again, Danielle was a hero, and dropped it off for us the next day!

Thursday was to be the fateful day the crew had been striving towards for what felt like a lifetime - departure day! Another day of last minute preparation saw more work finished off, and I headed up the mast to WD40 the track - the sail cars had struggled the previous day to be freely hoisted.

After sunset, though, all our Rumour-related grievances were forgotten, because finally - finally - we were underway. Freya steered us off the pontoon, and I stood at the bow searching for crab pots until we were far enough out. Sails up, and we headed south - Spain inbound.

The Bay of Biscay beckoned us.