Today was the first day of a very anxious week. We need a week’s worth or more of major work on the boat. Last month, we had a professional inspection done of our standing rigging (the wires that hold up the mast). Several cracks were found in critical areas along with some advancing corrosion in others. Given that all our standing rigging is almost 20 years old, we decided to have it replaced. Since the boat needed to be pulled out of the water for this job, we also decided to have the bottom painted at the same time. It’s been 4 years since Paula and I painted it back in Maryland and we could tell when I last dove under that much of the original biocide had leached out.
We will post on the progress of the work over the course of the next couple of weeks or so as it happens. Today in part 1 the boat came out of the water and was washed and blocked. In the next post (Part 2) , the mast will be pulled off the boat in order to renew the standing rigging.
Click here to read Part 2 of this job.
5 Responses
I would suspect that there was some “Blue Air” also exhausted.
Paula told me that there was a boat in the haul-out slip when you arrived and you had to jockey around until the other boat left the slip. I too had the same experience in Marathon. I don’t know if you remember the Marathon boat yard. There was very little room to jockey the wide 52 foot Defever. Ah the life of a boater.
Yes, there was a boat there. We were told ahead of time it might still be there and, if so, we were to pull into the empty slip next to the haul-out slip and wait for it to be moved. That’s what we attempted to do, but as we got halfway into the other slip, a couple guys jump on the other boat and started backing it out. The lift operator now told us to back our boat out and wait in the fairway for the other boat to leave. Then we were to immediately pull into the haul-out slip. All this was much easier said than done with all the current racing past the entrance to the haul-out slip. All of our maneuvers, as well as those of the other boat, had to be high-power and fast to overcome the current. Their was a lot of diesel exhaust in the air when all was said and done. Luckily no damage.
All our wishes for a speedy dry dock adventure! Good luck! And to think… in around a year and a half I’ll hopefully be joining this world too!
Thanks Rich!