First coat of InterProtect

Saturday 15 December, Jolly Harbour, Yard day 5: One coat of InterProtect and no other real progress.
Very early start for Glen, 6:30am, to finish sanding & acetone the waterline. And to mask it off before hired help starts painting the InterProtect. He is finished by 8am. But what a surprise, hired help doesn’t show up Hm, they were supposed to roll two coats of InterProtect today.

On this not so positive note, Glen returns under the hull and sands off the leftovers of old antifouling around the drains, strainers and rudder. The usual last 10% of the job that workers never seem to complete. It’s so hit and miss finding quality workers in unknown yards. During this the boss of the workers, Jesse, comes along and joins Glen doing these last few bits. We think he got the message!

When they’re finished, two hours later, still a no-show from the workers and Jesse has disappeared again too. Well, then we have time to wash the dust off the hull. Were they really planing on painted directly on the dusty hull? The water from the taps here in the yard is a creamy color, good thing we don’t have to fill our tanks from here. We actually wonder if washing it might make it dirtier!

The hull dries right on time, as Jesse shows up early afternoon to commence the InterProtect coatings. Well, he only rolls one coat. It’s a quick job, and he uses two full cans while at it. Hm, we bought only 5 cans as we estimated we’ll use 5 for 3 coatings. Behind him, with a brush, Glen goes over all the spots where the roller dind’t get to. And then we have a nice neatly painted gray hull. Oh, what a relief to see it like that. No more flakes of paint or scrapes. It should all be straight forward from here.

Chris, the woodwork specialist, comes onboard to have a look at the handrails and confirms he can make the plugs for us. Glen digs out a nice block of similar coloured teak (thank you, Ray) and few minutes later we have three test plugs. They fit just fine in the holes of the handrail, so the order is placed for 24 plugs.

While at the wood subject and now that we have the nice plywood, as the recreational activity to end the working day Glen gets into the constructive mode: to make new wedges to jam the anchor into the bow roller when we use the bow ladder. He made some last week out of the old wood chopping board but they didn’t last long (they split along the grain). With that as a mock-up, he now cuts new ones out of the plywood. He loves his jig saw! Then a bit of wood filler in some little dents, and a lot of sanding to make the edges rounded and very smooth. All they need now is some epoxy and paint. To be done tomorrow.

Nearly 6pm and we didn’t have lunch today. Being Saturday, all the charter catamarans are back in the marina for the guests change, which in theory should make the marina livelier. So we head out there to have a nice dinner in one of the restaurants. But same as previous evenings, they are all deserted. We settle for a Greek restaurant as we fancy calamari and gyros. But after sitting and getting comfortable we learn that they have neither dish available! What? No gyros at a Greek restaurant? So we dutifully chose something else and by the time we are served the place has a few other diners arriving.
We can’t stop wondering how these business’ survive. This should be the peak season for them, yet there are clearly not enough customers around.

Next stop at the West Point Bar, in search of Saturday night atmosphere. All very quiet here too, only 4 people at the bar. Well, it was quiet till they turned up the speaker and some awful music was blared at us. Soon after that, even these very few customers left. Why do they play black rap music complete with disgusting lyrics to an audience that clearly is not? Is it actually their intention to empty the bar? What happened to good old reggae music in the Caribbean?

After we also leave, we take a walk along the pontoon to see what boats have left or arrived. We come across an Oyster called Jig Saw. She was in the yard next to us till a couple of days ago, with people crawling all over her to finish jobs (it was clearly a last minute panic before owners arrive). The Scottish owners invites us on board for a drink, and we spend a very cheerful evening in their company, listening to their stories of cruising the Caribbean islands. They’ve had a boat here in Jolly Harbour for over 20 years and seemed to have cruised all over the Lesser and Dutch Antilles.

Back on Cloudy Bay we are in better spirits (the drinks might have something to do with the spike in our moods) and we crash in bed, not thinking of the work agenda for tomorrow. After all, it will be Sunday. Let’s see how that day of rest goes!