Thursday 25 October: Herrington Harbor North, yard day #9 – gunwale repaired nicely, hull compounding progresses well, epoxy coat on the keel and rudder and attempt on the vang sliding plate.
Frost on the deck, it was a very cold night.
Karen (Red Sky Yacht Detailing) arrives in the morning and continues the hull polishing job. We are beyond ourselves with excitement, how nicely she managed to bring out the color in the blue stripe. But boy does she work! Relentless, for 8 solid hours, pressing hard against the buffer. And this is only the compounding stage. There is cleaning after this, then the ceramic product, which will give the hull the final shine. She estimates 2-3 more days to finish it.
We pay a short visit to the MTS Electronics office to settle our bill for the antennas check and the SSB cable, and we also leave with them the decommissioned ACR Epirb and batteries for proper disposal and recycling.
More of our deliveries have arrived at Free State Yachts (thank you Roger and Liz for making your office our deliveries ground), and we go pick them up: the antifouling paint and speakers. And later in the day Liz brings over the new DJI drone which we have purchased as a spare. Now that will be one we need to test as soon as possible, and fingers crossed we don’t have to go through yet another return (after GoPro 5, GoPro 6, Karma Grip and Dell laptop!).
Glen tackles the vang. The screws holding the slider plate in the boom have loosened up, ovalising the holes, and the plate moves slightly when we are bashing into the waves. The easiest solution is to get bigger screws, M12. So we pay a visit to East Coast Marine Rigging to inquire if they have such screws. Which they don’t. Then to the hardware store, where we find the M12 thread, but not the hex head screws. So this project done properly will be on hold till we get the right screws. In the meantime, we have to improvise. We glue the current M10 in place, and hopefully they will stay there, preventing the holes from ovalising even more. If they stay locked in, we are good. If they move, at least we know we can get them off. We certainly have the right glue, and we know it immediately. Because as soon as the screws are tightened, we notice we installed the plate the wrong way around! And lots of banging and hammering is needed to slide it back out. It does come off, eventually. But what a mess. This is something you don’t see the riggers doing! Rethink of strategy is needed. Till a final resolution, the strong glue goes back in the glue box! Antigua should have a better supply of metric screws, so hopefully we get some there.
What we do buy in the hardware store is a small bilge pump. We asked the mechanics here in the yard what they use to descale the raw water system on engines end generators. They confirmed RidLime is the right product, but it doesn’t do the descaling job by just putting it in the engines. It needs to be circulated for 3 hours. Hence we bought this small pump, which will do the circulation. We’ll just need to figure out how to connect the pipes to it. And will wait for this exercise till we are back in the water, it will be safer on the engines.
At Annapolis Boat Show we were smitten with Parasailor, the all dancing all singing downwind sail. But when we heard the retail price we thought there’s no way on earth we will pay that price. We looked at second hand market, there’s no such sail available. Not for our size. So we inquired Parasailor about the possibility of further discount on the original rate. We got a reply today, but the discount is not good enough to make us jump at it. Plus, the delivery time will realistically be 12 weeks. Hm, tempting. But no thank you for the moment.
Early afternoon, Phibbs comes over to work on the gunwale. The guy was so quiet and efficient, that I didn’t even realize he was on the deck. And he finished his job in no time. The repair looks very good, you wouldn’t even know there was a damage there if the varnish wouldn’t be stripped off. Another company which services we are very happy with.
Glen finishes sanding the epoxy filler off the keel bulb, and I hope that will be the last dirty job for a while. He then rolls the first coat of epoxy, second coat will go on tomorrow. It looks like new, all smooth and bulbous!
By the time he has finished and cleaned up, (both around the boat and himself!) it’s already 6pm and we haven’t eaten yet. So it’s off to the pub for some comfort food, as they seem to call fast food in USA.
Later we are back snug in the saloon. Me editing videos and Glen testing the new JBL speakers and trying to initiate the new DJI drone. By 11pm enough is enough. Time for bed!