Just keep polishing, just keep polishing…

Thursday-Saturday 4-6 Nov, re-launch 2021, HHN day 36-38. Pretty much 3 full days of polishing.

The last 3 days are all a bit of a blur. I have a dreamy visualization of an electric polisher shaking my hands; microfiber cloths forever trying to get the perfect shine, and struggling to move heavy trestles around the boat. I think I was in my own-world of hull polishing! And what a hull it is – HUGE! With today’s technology, why can’t they build boats that just stay shining like new all the time? Why do us poor deprived boat owners have to annually use thousands of calories in a never-ending effort to make our boats look like new again. Then next year the same all over again. Pffff.

Actually, let us have a reality check here Glen. This is the first time you have attempted to polish the whole boat by yourself. In 2017 you gave up after the first 2 metres from the transom, and gave the job to the Spanish yard guys. 2018 you spent an untold crazy amount of money to have it professionally polished and then coated with the wonder-stuff: Ceramic-Pro. 2019 you only polished 30cm above the waterline. And here we are in 2021, doing polish avoidance again!

Excuse me? Not quite polishing avoidance, thank you very much! I soldiered-on for 2 days achieving a mirror finish on one side of the boat, the transom, and the waterline on the other side. But having almost collapsed in exhaustion on the 2nd day, I submitted that I’m too old for this and called in the cavalry to come take over on Saturday. The cavalry being Nacho, the El Salvadorian who painted the antifoul last week. He arrived at 8:30am to freezing temperatures and frost all over the boat and immediately got stuck into the job. With his youthful dexterity, I’m almost embarrassed to see him already halfway down the second side after just 90 minutes. Clearly there is a knack to this polishing lark, and I haven’t got it!

By midday he has completed the whole side, a task I had estimated the whole day for. So, to keep him busy I set him into action on the cabin top, which has not seen polish for 3 years now. While he polishes, I mask-off the teak, so we don’t get polish all over the decks. And even then, I only just manage to keep ahead of him. By the end of the day he is ½ way done and will finish it tomorrow, Sunday.

During the last few days, Ray has come on board to install the new teak outboard bracket. The last one (original from Hallberg Rassy) just about fell apart. He also re-installs two nicely re-varnished Gin-and-Tonic seats on the aft pushpit rail. Well, I guess they are simply called pushpit seats. The name G&T seats is our own, although we can never remember actually sitting on them with a Gin & Tonic!

We also have a visit from Gerret and Katrin, who just put their HR53 ashore in Jabin’s boat yard in Annapolis, for the winter. They will come back in the spring, when they plan to sail to Europe. Today they have driven down to Herrington Marina to see us and to “get away from boat work” for a day. What a great idea… maybe we should do that one day too!
We have a coffee over the usual discussions around our boats, maintenance, cruising etc. One of the topics is whether they should raise their boot-top (antifoul paint) because they have so much stuff on board the antifoul top is now under water. To help their decision, we give them all our European cruising pilot books – Balearics, Spain, Italy. Our boat at least will be a little lighter now 😊

Other than hull polishing during the day there have been several other jobs done too. The 7 repaired Empirbus CLC units arrived back from Sweden (sent for repair after they were damaged by lightning over the summer). Sent from Sweden on Monday and arrived here on Thursday. And delivered to our doorstep (well, at the step ladder that is!). Pretty good service from UPS!
However, our 2 other shipments from Sweden, coming from Hallberg Rassy are not doing so well. One shipment consists of a bunch of yacht parts including the new turnbuckles we need, the other is a dive compressor. They landed in the USA on time, but are now stuck in customs needing more information. FedEX tells us this in a “no-reply” email, yet give us no clue how to contact them to give them the extra information required. Sometimes the modern world amazes us with its stupidity. Or maybe it’s by design you cannot contact them? Who knows.

I also fitted the quick connect end plugs to the spare linear drives one of the evenings. So now we are good-to-go with full back up that is setup for a simple plug’n’play swap.

Meanwhile, inside the boat, Oana has been experimenting with making cakes. She has discovered the world of mug-cakes (cake in a mug) in the microwave. The banana version is delicious. And also making cakes in the bread maker. First one was a vanilla cake, but it got a bit burned, so we re-named it “burnilla cake”. But next cake was perfect. And cakes are just what I need to replace my burned calories from all that polishing!

The other way we are burning calories is keeping warm. These last 2 nights have been freezing, literally. Waking up to 10 degC in the boat and frost on the decks. So, we now set an alarm for 6am just to turn the heating on. Then go back to bed till the real alarm at 7am when the cabin is back to being toasty.
Winter is fast approaching. We will have to be getting on our way south if we want to avoid wooly-hat syndrome!