Happy new year to all Chauncy Maples supporters! Just before Christmas, the team in Monkey Bay faced their toughest challenge yet: they pulled Chauncy Maples out of the water, sideways, up the slipway, using winches installed in 1975.

To do this, Naval Africa of Durban designed vertical steel supports which were attached to wheeled bogeys on tracks. Getting the four bogeys down the tracks into deep water was the first challenge - it is only the start of the wet season and the lake level is low. Then the engines of the MV Ilala lifeboats were just not strong enough to pull the bogeys to the end of the tracks. A local fishing trawler came to the rescue and pulled them far enough out. Chauncy Maples was then towed carefully to sit over the bogeys and chocked into position, listing slightly lake-ward starboard side. Slowly, slowly, two winches pulled her up. 'I knotted a T-shirt on each wire cable as markers to watch that they all moved at the same speed. Otherwise she might have bent out of shape or even cracked,' said Ross Girdler. It took over six nerve-wracking hours to move the ship just 100 metres to the top of the slipway. 'Technically this was probably the most difficult part of the whole project,' said a relieved Ross. 'It was a sterling engineering effort with great team work from all at Monkey Bay. And thanks to Pieter Volschenk and his engineers at Naval Africa, for their impeccable design and planning.'

Here she will stay until the renovation is completed in 2013.

Making connections in Malawi

MV Chauncy Maples was successfully floated off the dry dock and into Monkey Bay, cheered on by the staff of the Malawi Shipping Company and Marco Zorzi, Managing Director of our new partner Mota-Engil. Ross, our marine engineer, said "Everyone involved in the project can feel pleased with their efforts, as we are one step closer to reaching our objective."

A couple of weeks later Pieter Volschenk of Naval Africa, Mark Holford and Janie Hampton inspected the work, and were delighted with the results. The next challenge is bringing the ship up the slipway, ready for stage two.

While we were in Malawi we had excellent meetings with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Transport, Mota-Engil and MacSteel, all of whom expressed their enthusiasm and commitment to the plans. We were delighted to be presented to the Honourable Minister of Health Dr Jean Kalinini MP, who has been watching the project closely.

As we left Monkey Bay for the airport, a tropical storm threatened to strand us the wrong side of a torrential gully. Using his bare hands and engineering skills, Ross managed to build a causeway with rocks and got our vehicle through! A little drama but not enough to dampen our spirits.

A Christmas present to the future

At Christmas many people ask their families to donate to charity instead of buying presents. If you would like to donate £10 or more on behalf of a loved one, we will send a card to say 'Thank you'. Simply donate as normal via JustGiving, and send us an email with the recipient's name and address before December 18th.

Next year promises more exciting progress, but until then we wish all of our friends and supporters a very Merry Christmas.