Haul-out

Tuesday 11 December, Antigua, Jolly Harbour Yard: Haul-out, chemical strip of antifoul and peel Coelan off the gunwale.
Ungodly wake up time (for us), 6.30am. Big day today, haul out! We are ready and well organized, but the marina office was less efficient on this particular occasion.

The travel lift is spot on time. After the usual faff with positioning the slings on the hull, Cloudy Bay is hanging nicely and eager to be lifted. But the travel lift engine stops. What’s going on? “Sir, we can’t haul you out. You have to go to the marina office to sign the contract.” We’ve been to the marina office at least 5 times by now, nobody ever mentioned we need to sign any more paperwork. We signed everything a month ago, when we booked the haul out and the yard time. Anyway, one trip (across the marina) later, travel lift starts moving again and Cloudy Bay gets out of the water. During which time I’ve been called “mami” way too many times for my liking.

We declined the pressure wash as there is no growth on the hull. Only a bit of slime, and Jesse, the contractor who will do the chemical strip and antifouling, said that it won’t affect in any way when they roll the chemical paint stripper later on.

Then another halt. What’s wrong now? “Sir, your boat is 37 tons, it needs to go back in the water to add another set of slings.”
What are you talking about? We didn’t load 7 tons on it since the last haul-out a month ago!
“But Sir, my computer can’t be wrong, it weighs 37t and I can’t move the boat in these slings. I am not taking any risks.” And there we are, gritting our teeth and adequately procrastinating.

Few minutes later he returns from his office “Sir, our travel lift measures in imperial tons. You are talking metric tons.”
Bottom line, Cloudy Bay starts being moved again. And soon after that she is positioned on the props, with high blocks of wood under the keel so that Glen can work on the bulb again.
Speaking of which, the beautifully painted and smooth keel bulb is now not so beautiful and certainly not so smooth. We can see the damage in full splendor, from when we touched bottom in Bermuda while we were docked on the town quay. The scratches are not that deep, didn’t go through the epoxy coat. But surface wise they are quite big. Not as bad as we thought, but a job to be repeated.

The slings are not even off the boat and Craig (Jesse’s guy) already starts applying the chemical stripper on the antifoul. That was quick. And he is moving fast. A couple of hours later we see clear progress. Hm, we like seeing hired help working so fast, for once.

There is shore power but we didn’t plug in yet. We can’t run the air conditioning anyway. So freezer gets switched off and our precious frozen items are stored in Linda’s freezer at Linda’s Cafe. Very convenient, only few meters away from the boat.

Cloudy Bay is positioned side on to the direction of the wind and not much breeze gets through the boat to cool us off. So the over boom sunshade comes out. That should prevent the decks from getting too hot. Normally, it acts like a tunnel, with the wind flowing under it. But side-on this cooling is not so effective.

While work is in full swing below the boat, we are busy with admin onboard. Calling Antigua airport to track our Parasailor. It was shipped from Grenada last week, and we haven’t received a notification for its arrival. After few calls we manage to get the information: it has arrived, an agent needs to go and clear customs for it.

David, metal work and heavy duty fittings specialist, comes onboard and we pick his brain on few projects from our list.
The easiest one, re-shape the stainless steel bar for the back of our cockpit tent. The tent originally came with an aluminum bar which was not exactly solid. And after holding our weight on it few times while getting in and out of the cockpit, the joining ends broke. So we had a more solid one made in Lanzarote, to copy the original bar plus some improvements in length and shape. Except the shape wasn’t achieved accordingly, and the tent doesn’t sit properly. David will fix it for us.
The more complicated job, which gives me pain only thinking about it, is drill three holes through the hull of the boat. We bought FrigoBoat keel coolers for our fridges, to replace the current keel coolers that don’t work so well in these sea temperatures. The spiral coil sits inside the thru-hull fitting of the sink drain, and when we are at anchor it just heats the water in the pipes. The compressors are working very hard to keep the fridges cool.

Philmore, the fridge specialist, comes onboard to see what we need him to do with regards to actually connect the new keel coolers to the compressors. Our fridges are Isotherm but the new keel coolers are Frigoboat – each with their own (different) connectors. So we need the pipes to be brazed. Philmore seems very knowledgeable on the subject, and most importantly he is very experienced with braising the copper pipes. Easy job he says, and that’s what we like to hear. In USA, nobody wanted to even attempt it.

After sunset, when it cools off on the deck, we attack the task of peeling the Coelan “varnish” off the gunwale. It peels easily in most places, in big sheets of rubbery plastic. But where it doesn’t come off nicely, it’s a real pain. So there will be some sanding needed on the spots with leftovers.
There we are, on our knees, ravaged by mosquitoes despite the coil burning right next to us, peeling the varnish and almost crying while doing so.
It’s such a good stuff, and a waste to remove it. But due to the collision incident when two sections of the gunwale have been damaged, we had to strip those bits for repair. Plus, there are several points where it wasn’t sealed properly and the teak got black where the water has infiltrated. So now sadly it all comes off. Such a shame, I really got to love this look of the boat, with varnished gunwale.

When I can’t feel my fingers anymore, I retire in the salon to resume on the editing front. And despite all defence mechanisms (citronella candle, burning coil, Raid in the socket and spray) I am still being eaten alive by the mosquitoes. Unbelievable. And unbearable! We’ll have to seal ourselves inside and spray the entire boat before we go to bed. It will be a sweltering night I suspect…

Glen is determined to make our lives more comfortable and tries to improvise a cooling circuit for the air conditioner. A large bucket of water goes into the engine room and both the suction of the water pump and the drain hoses are placed into the bucket. At first it works brilliantly and the saloon starts to cool down. But it’s surprising just how quickly that big bucket of cooling water heats up. Within 15 minutes it’s too hot to even put your hand in …. and, inevitably, the AC shuts down due to over heat. So it wasn’t such a great idea after all. But a classic example of the unorthodox things Glen’s brain can come up with!

Nearly midnight, we are ready to close the day and head for the showers. For the ladies rest room and shower, I have to get a key from the security guard (although the door has a keypad). And as luck would have it, the security is not around. Hm…
After a couple of minutes he shows up and I can jump in the shower. After being surrounded by burning coils, I smell like I have been burning wood all day. Stink would describe the smell better. The shower adventure concludes pretty fast, as there was no hot water. Not even warm.

Back on board we instantly research nearby AirBnBs that would have air conditioning and hot water. But most are expensive and the closest cheap one is 2Km away. So we decide to see what tonight’s sleep is like.