Wednesday 31 October: Herrington Harbor North, yard day #14 – Ceramic Pro nearing completion, and admin preparation for the passage.
Frost on decks again and very chilly morning, so we remain indoors doing a bit of admin. More software installed on the new laptop, calls to family, emails, lists checks.
Red Sky is in full swing again, with the Ceramic Pro coatings. It is coming out nicely, with a distinct shine on the gelcoat. The blue stripe along the hull is not perfect, but it is very good. The best result we saw on it yet. And we joke that we feel like we are polishing Cloudy Bay with gold dust.
Mid morning the sun warms up a bit and we have a bright day again.
Other than keeping an eye on weather forecast, we start the preparation for passage by activating the IridiumGo sim. Which we will need to get weather forecast while at sea. We have spare sims for both Sat Phone Store and Predict Wind, both IridiumGo retailers. And on this occasion we go for the Sat Phone option. With the activation on Nov1st, we can stop the package on Nov30th and pay for only one month. On Sat Phone there is no mandatory requirement of minimum one roll over into another month.
We bought a bottle of fridge coolant gas, which is quite big and heavy. We managed to find a place for it under the galley floorboard, right by the fridge compressors. But it needs to be firmly in place, not rolling around while we are at sea. So Glen gets some blocks of wood from scrap in the yard, and out comes the jigsaw. He cuts out a couple of blocks that will secure this bottle nicely.
Buster (Phibbs) comes onboard to inspect how the gunwale came out after the repair. Very nice man, running a professional team. He gives us advice on how to proceed with varnishing once the current Colen is stripped off. He says we should apply not less than 8-12 coats of varnish, otherwise the sun will ruin it, sand it every 6 months to reapply, and use plenty of sacrificial masking tape to protect the gelcoat under the gunwale.
Yard office confirms Cloudy Bay is booked to go in the water tomorrow. Good news. But the guy who is in charge of launching, and antifouling comes by and he says he’s not going to launch us with the antifouling flaking off. So Glen goes into another dirty mission, scraping all the loose antifoul paint around the hull.
During a short break from his chores, Glen goes to a barbers for a haircut. I don’t know what happened there, but instead of Glen, Jim Carey returns and starts working on Cloudy Bay. I have never seen such a fringe on a man’s haircut… other than Jim Carey. And I giggle for the rest of the day, each time his head pops through the hatch to ask me for tools 🙂
The dinghy needs to go back on the davits before we launch. And when Glen turns his attention to it, he noticed it has lost quite a bit of pressure. He pumps it up, and we lift it on a pallet, ready to fork lift tomorrow to the davits.
As it gets dark, we tidy up the cockpit, and all painting boxes are back into storage till Antigua. While at it, Glen checks the content of our grab bag, and recharges the emergency 12v battery. It will recharge phones and Iridium-go, if needed. We hope never!
Then he moves into the engine room to clean brass fittings on the water maker seacock. Certain fittings have an oxidation residue on them whilst others just look like new. The elbow on the water maker seacock is particularly bad. And on trying to unscrew it, it breaks off. In the break we can see the brass has gone from yellow to pink. This means dezicification, probably by stray voltages. When brass loses its zinc it also loses strength. If such fittings break unnoticed, the boat could easily flood and sink! So we will be on a mission to replace these fittings with bronze.
Another late evening, as we rolling into bed yet again after midnight.