Haulin'

This year's haul-out has come and gone remarkably quickly considering we did it over three days instead of our usual thirty-hour turnaround. Still, I didn't feel like I had time enough to post anything, or even to take any pictures, although looking back I can't see what might have been so urgent. Yesterday, the day we splashed, for instance, I spent several hours simply sitting around waiting for paint to dry after everything else was all done. We even went back in the water early, a boon to the always professional, always fun yard workers at the Port Townsend Boat Yard... it being Friday, an early splash time on the last scheduled boat of the day, which we were, means an early weekend!

I had so much spare time because I wasn't sure what sort of shape the keel might be in after a close encounter with a rock in Montague Harbour earlier this year. Based on previous experience, it felt like it might have done a fair piece of damage, gouged some lead out, perhaps even damaged the hull above. So I booked a day in the middle, anticipating some real work banging it all back into shape.

During the actual hauling out, I am still on board the boat (yes, it's a pretty strange feeling when you're standing on deck and 7 tons of boat starts to take off like a helicopter) and so when the underside comes clear of the water for inspection, I can't see a thing. So all I could do was watch everyone else watching it and to try to judge from the looks of horror exactly how bad it might be. There were no obvious gasps or cries as it came out, but there was an ominous hush among the spectators which I took to bode ill.

When I stepped off and looked for myself, though, I got a pleasant surprise... some paint and epoxy had come off at the bottom of the fin, but there was hardly any lead damage, and it was all confined to a patch about four inches at the trailing edge of the keel. Why the trailing edge? We were in forward when we hit... I assume that most of the trouble came from getting off again. Conventional wisdom, in fact, is that once you are hard aground, it's better to stay there and refloat on the tide than to try to get a pull off. Our luck with that technique hasn't been so great, though, so I am fine with the decision we made to get yanked off quickly rather than waiting around.

Anyway, it took very little epoxy and fairing to get the keel back in shape, and most of it was done by the end of the first day. That day was a little windy to be painting, anyway; my friend Maxx and I had sailed up making hull speed on only a little scrap of unfurled jib, and all those powerful winds continued to hammer right into the yard after we arrived.

The next day was calmer and sunnier and dry enough for me to get 1.5 coats of paint on; I did a double-thickness with extra coppery paint near the waterline, where most of our fouling problems are. That said, the existing bottom job looked pretty damn good considering it had been in the water three years: the sprayers took off most of the crud, and the only barnacles were on the prop shaft and at the bottom of the rudder. The prop shaft zinc was missing, too... not sure at what point that might have come off but there was corrosion and pitting on the prop and strut, which isn't good. This year, in addition to putting a fresh zinc on, we put on a couple coats of a zinc spray paint which is supposed to help protect against both growth and corrosion.

While I painted, my stepfather did most of the epoxy and fairing work, my mother waxed and polished, and Maxx and Mandy worked on the other big project on the schedule: repacking the rudder stuffing. On and off, that took the better part of the first two days, but Maxx also found time to clean and paint the engine (at least, such parts of the engine that can be reached without taking it out entirely) and Mandy waxed and buffed the hull above the waterline. Some gouges and scratches in the gelcoat at the bow also got fixed up.

Everything ended up looking very nice and clean when all was said and done. I had two major disappointments, though. One, the radar, which had been acting up for more than a year and finally quit completely last summer, remains out of commission despite a rather lengthy trip up the mast to check the circuits and re-seat connectors and such. Whatever is wrong with it, it's more complicated than I can figure out, which likely makes it expensive to fix. Two, the rudder, despite being repacked, still leaks. I will have to tear that back apart in the water, possibly weighting the bow to raise the shaft above the waterline. I have some idea what might have gone wrong there, but won't be able to look at it for a couple weeks.

We also think that the muffler is leaking now; we make a lot of water underway, and I can see that the prop shaft is not leaking, but what is coming out comes out from near the front of the muffler. It's impossible to see the muffler itself, which is wedged in under the fuel tank, but it will probably have to come out for further examination at some point soon.

We basically came out of it having checked everything I wanted to check, but with only about half of it actually successfully addressed. Nonetheless, I feel better about it all than I probably should with that poor a track record, simply because the worst that might have come up, a major keel repair job, never materialized, and that was enough a relief to make up for the other disappointments.