The daily grind

Wednesday, October 19

So, what do you do on a boat, when you are perched on jack stands in the boat yard, and don't have the fun of planning your next cruise/anchorage?  Mostly, you work on the boat ... from the deck to the keel, there are many projects that are far easier on land.

The bottom paint job took 3 days for 3 coats of paint, and one day to move the jack stands and paint the squares that had been covered.  The bottom is now black .. very sleek looking and goes well with our ninja-like sailing!  While we miss the dolphins, mermaids and reef scene that the previous owners painted on the bottom, the solid black color really shows the great condition our our keel and bottom (whew ... no damage for our first-year groundings!)

Once the bottom was done, we started on the boot stripe, the strip of paint at the water line that is painted with special paint to withstand the growth of algae and barnacles. Because our boat tends to list to port (lean slightly to the left -- probably due to the 10 cases of beer Dan carries on that side!), Dan decided to change the boot strip to more accurately reflect how Maja sits in the water (called 'raising the water line').

In between the sanding and the painting on the hull, Dan has been busy installing our latest purchases from West Marine.  The prize of the day was a new BBQ grill for the boat.  It's got auto-ignite and uses infra-red heat (a tip we learned from Kricket and Russ this summer for hotter grilling and honest-to-goodness grill marks!).

Out with the old ...

And in with the new! 

With the bottom paint done, we're working our way up the boat -- and when we get to the deck, we'll be ready to be dropped back in the water!  Time to take on the cleaning and waxing and polishing ... unskilled labor that I'm really good at!  The last time I cleaned the hull in November, I was either perched on the side of the dinghy or hanging off the dock, so I'm looking forward to taking on this job from a scaffold.  If you saw Karate Kid, you've got a general idea of what this job is like -- wipe on, wipe off.  Except that the cleaner leaves a light film on the hull unless you really put some muscle into the wipe off ... and you've got to be committed to the polishing if you want that delightful shine on the hull once you're done.   After the hull, I'll be at deck level .. which leaves me the stainless steel on deck to clean and polish... and who knows, maybe a few coats of varnish are in my future ....

We are paying $16/day here so we not in a huge hurry to leave.  The weather has been lovely, so it's been easy working weather.  We've taken our bikes out, but there's not too much around Green Cove Springs to get excited about....besides this well-run, very inexpensive marina! 

Since we aren't using our anchor, we decided to have the anchor and anchor chain galvanized in Jacksonville, something they sorely needed to erase the corrosion that life in salt water causes.  It was kinda scary at the end of the season, knowing that our 22,000 lb home was dependent on that ratty-looking chain and anchor. 

Pretty!  Really don't want to put it back in the water!

Thanks to the handy scaffold, Dan is able to repair the bow gel-coat.

So far, we've had one rain day, which we thoroughly enjoyed thanks to the care package of books and candy that arrived the same day from Webster WI! Thanks Jim!

Now that the boat is all shiny and clean, we are counting down the days until she's back in the water ... probably next Wednesday, November 2 ... giving us a few days on the water to enjoy the end of daylight savings time.  We want to be passing through Jacksonville when our good friend, Mikel Wheeler, comes to town to look for housing prior to his job relocation to MCF in December.  After that, who knows which direction we'll head.  Dan kinda wants to wait until we are in the middle of Jacksonville harbor and then decide -- north or south.  Do we go up to Brunswick to visit friends and leave our boat there for our Christmas trip to GA? Or do we head south, towards warmer weather, and stop either in Vero Beach or Miami? 

Decisions ... decisions.....