A Tale of Two Chemists: On the hard, again

On the hard, again ... Tuesday 7^th May 2013

What a day this has been! At seven this morning, Mike jumped out of bed and announced that he was going to shower. This put a lot of pressure on me to do the same. Reluctantly, I crawled out of bed and got my stuff together. It was an okay shower, nothing special, still better than the garden sprayer, though. When I got back to the boat, Mike was in the middle of cleaning the fridge and freezer. The surfaces of the galley were covered in food items. All this activity happened before my morning coffee. That’s just wrong.

At nine, Tim from the boat yard called to say they were ready to haul us out. We scrambled around getting ready—stowing things that might fall over, getting lines on the port side of the boat. Fortunately, the plan was for us to motor to the fuel dock and then be ‘walked’ into ‘the pit’. This all went smoothly. Then came the start of the hauling out. We were still on the boat as they tightened up the straps. I was starting to think we were taking the lift out with the boat. Instead, Tim backed us up so we could jump off the stern. Then they lifted the boat for real and pulled it out. It was quiet impressive to watch. I found it almost hard to believe seeing the lift driving around the yard with my boat/home suspended by two slings.

Once Cotinga was up on the hard, Paul (from the boatyard) power washed the bottom. Then he set the blocks under the keel and placed the stands. When the travel-lift was out of the way, it was our turn to get to work. Our task was to clean the white stripe at the water line. Over the months this had gone from bright white to dingy white to a “café au lait” color. The green slime present in some areas was just the finishing touch to create a truly disgusting look. First Mike scrubbed the slime with a cleanser. Then we applied what might be the most effective cleaning product I have ever seen. It’s called “On and Off”. This stuff is truly amazing. Perhaps it’s the hydrochloric acid, maybe it’s the phosphoric acid, the oxalic acid or the combination, that chemist’s house of horrors is astonishing. This stuff will take care of your ICW moustache before you can say Jiminy Cricket. I thought it was everything that you’d ever hoped your “Easy Off” oven cleaner would be (but wasn’t). Photographic evidence attached!

I think the amazing progress on the water-line stripe sent Mike into a cleaning frenzy. After we picked up the hire car, he cleaned the soot off the transom. Then he got to work on clearing the barnacles off the propeller. It was quite the afternoon.

The bottom painting should begin tomorrow. Hopefully by Friday we will get the boat back in the water. I’ll be glad. It has only been about 12 hours since the boat came out of the water. Already I’ve had enough of climbing up and down that ladder. It’s a long step from the top of the ladder to the deck of the boat. It seems even worse on the way down….

Gloria

The other thing we did this afternoon was pick up a rental car. We plan to take the car up to Washington to meet my mum and sister off the plane from England and then tour some historical sites in Virginia and pennsylvania. A man from Enterprise picked us up at the marina and took us back to their office. Having completed the paperwork the lady who was helping us took us outside to inspect the car - not the full size sedan we had booked, but an "upgrade" to a bright red dodge Ram 1500 4x4 truck! My first thought, was "yes" we just might be able to fit my sisters luggage in the back of the truck (Ali has yet to demonstrate that she knows the meaning of traveling light ... but this time she says she's got it cracked!). My second thought was that my mum may not be able to get into the back seat and she's not going to like sitting in her wheel chair in the bed of the truck. Seriously, there was no cap on the truck and therefore nowhere to safely leave your luggage and my mum probably couldn't have gotten in to the front or back. So we told the lady it wasn't suitable and they gave us a Chrysler Seebring 300 instead - which is a very large and fancy sedan! (Ali, if you are reading this - the boot (trunk) is tiny!)

Mike