Hauled out

Wednesday 17 October: Herrington Harbor North – hauled out, but actual jobs still didn’t start.
Early rise, we have water depth to check! And sure enough, we see 3.1m. Perfect! So we head to the travel lift guys, which confirm we can be lifted. Glen doesn’t want to waste a moment, and before I know it engine is on and mooring lines ready to be slipped. I didn’t even finish my coffee!
After a quick and very slick 180 turn, Cloudy Bay is ready to be reversed into the slip. Though the reverse is not by engine power, but by manual power. We thought 30 tones will be impossible to move by hand, and here they are, two guys pulling Cloudy Bay into the slip. Good job there is no wind!
The travel lift, like all the equipment we’ve seen so far in this yard, is in very good condition. As a precaution, we flip down the WiFi booster antenna and tilt the radar. But as Cloudy Bay is raised in the slings in final position for pressure wash, we realize we shouldn’t have worried. Still plenty of space to the travel lift upper bar.
When Cloudy Bay is propped and chocked, our friend Ray stops by, and he brings us a step ladder so that we can climb on the boat. Very thoughtful of him. Only in America you would find such friendly and helpful people.
Roger, the Free State Yachts agent whom we bought Cloudy Bay from, also stops by. We have a very nice chat to him, and probably we’ll see more of him these days while we are in the yard so close to his office.
We do our usual tours around Cloudy Bay to inspect anodes, grounding plates, paint, propeller, rudder. All of them will need attention. The most obvious thing by far is the bulb, which is seriously scraped after we ran aground a couple of times (in Martinique and in Shelter Island).
Antifouling: The hull was not too bad (not much growth, and very few small barnacles), considering it hasn’t been scrubbed in a couple of months now. I guess alternating from salt water to fresh water had something to do with it. Although, as it proved later in the day, this fresh water might have had a detrimental effect on our previous antifouling coats too. As the hours passed, we noticed chunks of the paint are flaking off. Hm, we’ve never had that before. On any boat. So can’t tell for sure what caused this reaction, we can only assume one of the previous coats was not suitable for fresh water. It’s clear that old paint needs to come off. When Mike comes over, he suggests we should do a soda blast which is milder than sand blasting. This process is quite expensive, and it will also add at least a week to our yard time due to several layers of primer to be added before the antifouling goes on. And that guarantees there will be no flaking after. The other option is the traditional sanding, which will be time consuming and dirty, but the antifouling can go on immediately after. We’ll decide on this subject tomorrow.
Ordering the actual paint for antifouling was quite an ordeal. Budget Marine didn’t have the dark blue color, and can’t bring it from other store either due to transport of hazardous goods regulations. So we opt for online shopping. We find the color with a supplier, call them and give credit card information. Order confirmed, money out of our bank. Half an hour later we receive an email that card was declined as fraud. We call again and offer to give another card number, which they refuse. And when we ask about the declined card, they say they can’t deliver to an address so far away from the billing address. Never heard of such a stupid explanation before. Imagine how worldwide deliveries would work if suppliers would have such delivery policy. Then we go to order online (from the same supplier’s website) and pay with PayPal, but that doesn’t go through either. Error is delivery address again. Yet, we receive another order confirmation, with a tracking number. So we call again. How come they ship an order when the order was not accepted? After an investigation at their end, turns out they can’t explain the tracking number, nothing has been shipped to us. If we would have trusted the email with the order confirmation, we would have waited for our paint forever. Frustrated and angry (entitled to feel that after such an ordeal) we go and order on Amazon. No errors there. Yet! Even though the paint actually comes from the same company mentioned above!
Electrics: on the subject of making the batteries and safety switches watertight, we drive to two nearby hardware stores to have a look of what we might find useful for our project. Not a lot to choose from, but we might come up with something. And instead, we walk out with a new water hose, mosquito spray and T-9.
Steering: We noticed that the rudder rubbed against the hull. So for the evening job, Glen goes under the bed to the steering system and lowers the rudder a couple of millimeters. Then he centers the wheel too. When we sailed from Antigua to USA we had a violent wheel spin while reversing very hard, and the wheel didn’t center properly since. Something is out of align somewhere, but we cannot work out what!
We were planning for only one week in the yard, but looks like it will take slightly longer. Jobs are adding up. And on that note, we drive to our temporary accommodation for a hot bath and then hit the pillows. There will be lots of busy days ahead.