A Tale of Two Chemists: Boat Jobs

Boat Jobs … Wednesday 5th December 2012

Good news! Gloria has forgiven me for waking her up in the early hours of Tuesday morning… at least I think she has. As you may have realized we had left all the hatches open, but hadn't put in the insect screens and I was getting eaten by one or more mosquitos that I could hear buzzing round my ear. If careers were based solely on what we are good at then I would be a Mosquito Magnet. Apparently aerosol bug spray is not the only thing that sets off our propane alarm ... cooking with wine also seems to activate it. Hopefully propane does as well, but thankfully to date we have not proven this. We have learned how to deal with the challenges of the propane sensor and a typical recipe goes something like this … sauté shrimp then set aside, add garlic and red chillies, cover propane sensor in plastic film, add white wine and simmer … you get the picture.

Since we got to Vero Beach we have been starting to work our way through a list of boat jobs. Yesterday we managed to replace the pencil zinc inserted in the refrigeration heat exchanger. This had been a cause of concern because you are supposed to check it every month and we only found out by chance about 4 days ago that such a thing existed. This one had been in use for more than 6 months. Anyway it did look pretty gnarly and we were happy to replace it and buy spares for the future. In addition to fresh water faucets, we also have a salt water faucet in the galley sink. However, the water that came out of it was none too pleasant smelling, probably due to infrequent use and dead marine organisms. So yesterday we also stripped down the pump and all the piping back to the through hull and cleaned it out. We now have a fully functional system that provides clean odorless sea water. Gloria also did a Sterling job polishing the stainless steel on the deck. Today, we scrubbed the hull at the waterline and a couple of feet below to remove algae and growth. This went well, but it's clear that there are patches where the bottom paint is rubbing off, I think particularly where we cleaned it before. It's a bit of a dilemma because brushing off the growth does tend to rub off at least some of the anti-fouling. Anyway after this we hosed down the hull and deck with fresh water and the boat now looks pristine (almost!) This afternoon we put the outboard on the dumb dog and dinghied down the ICW to the centre of Vero Beach. It's about 3-4 miles, but once out of the harbor and into the main channel we could put the dinghy up on plane and motor in pretty fast. Outside of the channel speeds are restricted to slow, no wake to avoid injuring manatees. We tied up at the Riverside Cafe and walked across to the ocean beach. Today I splashed out and bought a Florida fishing license. We watched a couple fishing off the beach and they each caught fish in a short space of time so now we are raring to go. We ate dinner at the Cafe on the way back and then motored back to the Marina in the dark, which was an atmospheric trip.

Mike