Dirty job scraping the keel bulb

Sunday 21 October: Herrington Harbor North, yard day #5 – scrape the keel bulb and continue polishing.
The wind is howling in the night, and by 3am is pretty clear we won’t be able to sleep with worry for Cloudy Bay. So we drive to the yard to check up on her. Good thing we did. The dinghy, down on the ground, was lifting a little bit in the wind. So we moved it from the pallets to a more sheltered place and tied it to a post. On the deck, one of our large (and important) inflatable fenders was almost about to make a jump, and we saved it in time. We put everything we had in the cockpit inside the boat, then we feel it’s all safe and secured. And when we are back in bed an hour later, sleep comes easy as the wind howls even more outside as a large cold front blows through.

Working day again, even if it’s Sunday. Glen has an even dirtier job than yesterday. He wants to scrape off the antifouling from the keel bulb, to apply a fiberglass cloth on the front of the keel and on the bottom of the bulb to give it extra protection, given we seem to be quite good at hitting the bottom these days! We don’t have all the right tools or materials, so quick drive to the hardware store for scraper and blades, face mask, and glass fiber cloth. Then he is ready to get dirty. Very dirty. Couple of hours into it and Glen turns into a Bluech (a blue Grinch). I can hardly make out his face from under the thick layer of blue dust. In the blue coverall, with blue skin and hair, under the blue hull he is completely camouflaged! Nothing will grow on his face for a while. His face might fell off, but nothing will grow on it! 🙂 Mid-afternoon the bulb is scraped and sanded, no more dust…for the moment. The last traces of antifouling he removes with wet and dry sanding, after which the keel bulb is left smooth and spotless. Same as the rudder yesterday. “Nobody has looked this long at the underside of the keel like I have done today.”, Glen comments as he lifts his head from the gravel, where he had been lying for hours.

Mike and Ellis continue with polishing the hull, and we can see some progress there as they move to the other side of the boat. After giving it another go on the first side which was looking yellow yesterday, today seems to be less yellow. I guess we will remember forever the dirty rivers.

Ray stops by for his daily visit, and gives us some good advice how to go about applying the glass fiber cloth to get rid of air bubbles, filling grooves, and even lends Glen a full face mask. He and Glen also chat about the best way to secure the boom slider where the vang attatches. It has 4 large M10 bolts, but the holes in the boom have ovalised allowing the slider to move a little as we pass over waves. The answer seem to be to buy bigger bolts and retap the holes.

Since departure day is approaching (before which we need to load Cloudy Bay with provisions), I spent most of day doing a stock count and inputting the data in my provisioning file. A smart excel file that helps me calculate which items I still need to buy and what quantities, based on historical data of consumption and time span till next big provisioning.
We decide to have a shorter working day today, and by 8pm we are ready to retire to our accommodation. Where the priority is antifouling paint off! Glen’s clothes go into the washing machine, and he goes straight into the bathtub for a good soak and scrub. And boy does he need it.

Before bed we again try our new DELL laptop. It was only intermittently turning on when we first tried it 2 nights ago. And guess what, again it wont turn on. Yet another electronics gadget that will need to be returned. We almost have a 100% negative record on new electronics purchased this year 🙁
If we can briefly forget about the DELL, we will sleep like (clean) babies tonight after a full days work and our disturbed sleep the night before.