22 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
It was very hot last night, but we had three fans going, so it was just about bearable.
This was our first day of work on the hard. Glenys started on the tedious job of scraping barnacles off the hull, while I researched which type of antifouling paint to put on. There’s only a few things that are more emotive to sailors than which antifoul to use - there’s so many different options; hard or ablative; copper or copper free; additional biocides; manufacturer; colour; etc.
I’ve decided that I want an ablative antifoul, which slowly leaches from the hull releasing the biocides – something similar to Interlux Micron Extra. There are some cheaper brands which allegedly do the same job. They will reduce the cost of the paint from $600US to $450US, but if I get it wrong, we’ll have lots of growth on the hull in 12 months’ time and we’ll have to haul out again, which could cost another $500 US - decisions, decisions.
I tackled our windlass, which has been making very ominous rumbling sounds and leaking seawater into the front cupboard when we are bashing to windward. My previous attempt in Curacao last September was a complete failure. I couldn’t even separate the two halves – the capstan is above deck and the motor and gearbox are below deck. Since then I’ve bought some spare bearings and seals, which is a good job because after struggling for a couple of hours, I managed to get it all apart and found that practically all the seals have collapsed. To make matters worse the main bearing just at deck level is completely rusted up and disintegrating. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to remove the old bearing from the deck base plate. If I have to get a new one, it will cost $450US.
Glenys borrowed one of the marina bikes and went into town to do some shopping. She came back with essentials like bread & coke and found out that the local hardware store (True Value) sell air-conditioner units for only $120.
We had to wait for an hour to use the marinas courtesy car and rushed into town to buy the air conditioner and a 100 foot extension cable. It only took me twenty minutes to set it up and what a difference – we sat indoors, had Garlic Prawns for dinner and luxuriated in the cold.
23 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
We slept like logs because it was so pleasantly cool.
I went to hardware store to get some more scrapers and chisels while Glenys went to Farmers Market at the nearby Maritime Museum - she found out that there’ll be a jazz band playing there tonight.
We spent the rest of the day scraping the hull. There’s over 400 square feet of hull surface and we have 50 barnacles per square foot – that’s 10,000 barnacles each. Each barnacle takes 4 scrapes with a 1” wide scraper, so that’s a total of 40,000 scrapes. It’s brutal work and we only completed half of the hull today.
Glenys nipped off early and went down to a local seafood store to buy some dinner before we went to the Maritime Museum. The event was really nice, with a good jazz band and lots of locals chilling out. We ate our crab balls and salad, then Chuck come over with some Blue crabs that he’d cooked in beer and vinegar in a portable steamer. We had no idea how to eat them, so he patiently showed us how to pull them apart and eat the sweet white meat. It’s very messy, but tasty – I wonder if it takes more energy to peel them than we get from the crabs.
24 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
We put the air conditioning on high all night, making it so cold that I had to get up and pull a duvet over me – brilliant!
We spent all day scraping the goddamn hull. It was slow going especially because people kept coming up and chatting to us. Steve and Lynn from “Celebration” even turned up. They’ve been hauled out in a boatyard in Urbana, which is only ten miles away. They’ve hired a car and are planning to visit family before coming back to their boat in September. Hopefully we’ll see them again before we head south.
In the evening, we went to a local restaurant called The Galley, where I was very brave and had soft shell crabs. These are blue crabs that have recently moulted their exoskeleton and are still soft. The whole crab is dipped in flour, pan fried then eaten whole – soft shell and all. They were OK, but I reckon that they were deep fried in chip fat as they were very, very greasy – fat just oozed out as I bit into them.
25 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
It was another nice cold night. It was very difficult to climb out of bed at quarter to seven because I ache all over from scraping. Mac, the engineer, turned up at half past seven and started to disconnect the generator ready to lift it out.
I went to see Chuck and tried to get some estimates from him for how much my jobs are going to cost. He’s not willing to commit to a fixed price and I don’t blame him because jobs on boats have a tendency to escalate as problems occur. However, to make a long story short, I reckon that it’s going to cost us about $20,000 including replacing the standing rigging, a couple of new winches, new running backstays, new engine mounts, new propeller shaft seal and miscellaneous work on the generator & engine.
Glenys got on with a few jobs on the hull - scraping and sanding, while I tried to get the rusted bearing out of the windlass base. I’ve soaked it in some strong penetrating oil for 24 hours and used an oxyacetylene torch to heat it up to try to loosed the corroded bearing. Unfortunately, I failed to move it at all, so I’ll have to buy a new base plate which I think will cost $500.
The travel lift turned up later in the morning and moved us further up the yard because there wasn’t enough room to get the crane in to lift our mast out. As soon as we were chocked up, the rigger (Clifton) appeared and inspected the rig, loosening the bottle screws ready to lift the mast off the boat. I talked him through the various jobs that I want doing and he seems pretty switched on which is encouraging.
After lunch, the crane arrived and we had a couple of hours of frenzied activity while the mast was lifted out – it all seemed to go well.
Mac then commandeered the crane to lift out the generator which didn’t go quite as smoothly. I gave him a hand because there was nobody else around to help him – the riggers all disappeared even though Mac helped them take off the mast. There’s an opening in the floor of our cockpit hatch which is directly above the generator and obviously intended to allow the generator to be removed. The generator is installed in a sound proof tray and it soon became apparent that the hatch isn’t big enough for the generator and the tray.
After an hour of sweating and cursing, we just managed to squeeze the damn thing out of the hole. Poor old Mac was sweating and cursing as he struggled to disconnect hoses and other bits down in the hole, while I stood in the cockpit telling the crane driver when to lift and lower the crane hook. At least I learned the hand signals to control a crane.
Meanwhile, Glenys did a load of washing and organised a hire car for a couple of weeks starting at the end of this week. We’re hoping that I’ll have agreed the scope of all the jobs with the yard by the end of the week, and we can disappear for a couple of weeks while they do the work. Glenys has arranged for us to go horse riding for four days while we’re away.
Rather than cook dinner, Glenys cycled into town and returned with a huge pizza that we devoured before collapsing into bed.
26 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
It was a beautiful morning, blue skies and a lovely chilly feel to it. We went shopping first thing. I dropped Glenys off at the supermarket and then went to the hardware store to buy antifoul paint, brushes and a few other things. I’ve finally decided to go with the cheaper stuff – hopefully it will be good and I won’t be cursing in a few months’ time.
Back on boat, Glenys continued to prepare the hull. When we were going to Curacao last September, we were caught out in a 40 knot gale, which resulted in some large patches of antifouling falling off the front of the hull. Rather than paying over $3,000 to have the antifouling sand blasted off, we’re just going to scrape off any loose stuff, sand the edges and hope that more paint doesn’t fall off.
I rang the USA distributor for the windlass and found to my horror that the lead time for the windlass base plate is six weeks. They seem very knowledgeable about it all and even told me that I would have to buy some other bits because Lofrans changed the design in 2002 a year after ours was installed. I told them that I wanted the part. I then went to the marina office to do some admin and emailed another distributor in the UK who might have a windlass base plate - I hope so, otherwise we’ll be stuck here for a couple of weeks more than we want.
Glenys washed the hull topsides ready to polish it, while I retreated down below to clean up the mess left when the generator was taken out - at least I had the air conditioning running while I was working in the stuffy engine room.
We painted the patches on the bottom – the idea is to give these areas a couple of extra coats of paint to build them up a bit before we put on the main two coats of paint. We had barbequed steak for dinner in the boatyard’s barbeque area – it was a good evening meeting Matt from “Troubadour” and Stan from “Green Eyes”.
27 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
Glenys spent all day polishing the topsides with a lovely little buffing machine that we bought for the princely sum of $28. After three hours she’d only done an eighth of the hull, so she changed strategy and concentrated on the waterline, so that we can put the masking tape on and paint the bottom tomorrow.
I had another project meeting with Chuck, they’ve not had time to do anything with the generator and I’m keen to find out if there is any more work to do on the components under the generator that probably haven’t seen the light of day for 12 years. Typical of boat yards, they are trying to make the job bigger than it should be. I made it quite clear to Chuck that I don’t want a major overhaul of the generator, I just want it cleaned up, the new engine mounts put on and refitted back in the boat.
I painted the steel frame that acts as a base for the generator, repaired a small section of fibreglass which covers the rudder bearing assembly and cleaned up the windlass shaft. The supplier in the UK doesn’t have the part in stock and will probably be quoting six weeks delivery as well. I helped Glenys with the topsides in the afternoon and we painted the knocked out areas on the bottom again – the first coat of antifoul should go on tomorrow.
We arranged a pot luck barbeque with some of the other boats in the yard. It was well attended and everyone was pretty jolly by the end of the evening. We met Mark & Julie from “Rachael”, Tom from “No Limits”, John from “Hope Floats” and Walter & Gwen from “Salt Shaker”
28 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
I helped Glenys with the topsides in the morning. She carried on buffing the water line with rubbing compound and I focused on cleaning the hull with some stuff called “On & Off” which contains three different types of acid. It might be nasty stuff, but it’s very effective, removing all sorts of stains from the gel coat.
After lunch, I borrowed the marina’s courtesy car again and nipped into town to buy a few things. I also arranged for someone to give us a quote for steam cleaning our carpets and the upholstery.
It was very warm today with temperatures approaching 100°F in the afternoon. We packed up at four o’clock because it was so damn hot. We’ve got the hull masked off and ready to be painted in the morning when it will be cooler.
We had soft shell crabs for dinner. I bought them this afternoon from the fish store. They cleaned them for me, which I believe consists of cutting off the crab’s face to kill them and then pulling out the lungs – nice. Glenys dipped them in spiced corn flour and sautéed them in butter – much, much better than the ones from the restaurant a few days ago. I found this description of soft shell crabs:
“Starting in May and throughout the summer, the blue crab abandons its shell and starts to form a new one, making its sweet, briny, delicious meat — usually incredibly tough to get at — immediately accessible. When the crab is moulting, in fact, practically the whole thing is edible, and the new shell is among the best parts. The combination of tenderness and crunch makes it one of the great delights of eating.
The shell remains soft for only a few hours after the crab has moulted, making timing just about everything for this industry, located mostly on the central Atlantic coast and most famously in Chesapeake Bay.”
I love them.
29 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
Glenys painted the hull with antifouling this morning – it looks good but there are a couple of small areas that have bubbled where there is obviously some loose paint. I guess that the thinners in the new paint has worked its way underneath the old stuff. We’ll just have to scrape these off tomorrow.
I slackened off the coupling to the gearbox and slide the prop shaft backwards to inspect it. Fortunately, it looks okay – there’s as few small spots of corrosion, but the shaft isn’t scored where it sits in the cutlass bearing. I’m quite relieved because Chuck said that a new prop shaft would cost about $2000!
I then removed the exhaust elbow from the engine. It was a major struggle removing the 3½” hose from the exhaust muffler – I had to hack it to bits with a Stanley knife and screwdriver to get it off. I cleaned up the face of the turbo – the last engineer to work on the engine said that the face was badly corroded, but it looks OK to me. I painted the new exhaust elbow and bought a new piece of 3½” exhaust hose, so I should be able to put it all back together tomorrow when the paint dries.
A guy came and collected us from Hertz Car Rental and took us back to Gloucester to sign all the paperwork. We then called in at Wal Mart and bought a cheap tent for $40. It’s Independence Day next Wednesday and there will be a lot of people on holiday next week. We’re planning to go walking in Shenandoah National Park and bought the tent in case we can’t find any other accommodation.
We bought some spare ribs and cooked them in the Marina’s barbeque area - this was a bit of a mistake because it was incredibly hot in there.
30 June 2012 Deltaville, Chesapeake
There was a big thunderstorm and heavy rain last night, so it was lovely and cool in the morning.
Glenys got on with painting the bottom, while I put the exhaust elbow back in and tidied up the engine room. My new guitar arrived in the morning, but I didn’t have time to play around with it very much.
It was blisteringly hot, so we packed up at lunch time and went into Deltaville to watch the Heritage Day/4th July celebrations. They had a small craft fair with some food stalls, so we had crab cakes for lunch and then waited in the shade for the parade. It was very disappointing, basically being a parade of vintage cars, a few sad looking floats put together by the local businesses and fire engines sounding their sirens – they are proud of their fire engines. There was no marching band, just two lonely teenage girls with cheerleader batons - it’s a small town thing that they put on for the kids, throwing out sweets and trinkets as the parade goes past.
We wandered back to the boat and Glenys went to the lounge to get internet access while I amused myself with my guitar. I’ve bought a video based teaching course which seems very good. I stupidly spent three hours trying to play the instrument, so my left hand finger tips are now very sore.
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