It took 11 days but Nati is floating again ....and is CLEAN!

We pulled away from the dock at Fairview Marina on Friday, the 13th and motored over to Pleasure Cove Marina for our annual haul-out.  Nati, sitting in the Chesapeake all summer is in desperate need of a "bottom job".  We have a long list of projects we want to address so for 11 days it is nothing but hard work in the day and sleep!

up we go.........

No problems with the haul-out as we had no wind and the weather gods cooperated.  Yes, the bottom was "ugly", but not as bad as we thought.  Stevie power washed her and then she went to a nice concrete spot on the tarmac, ready for us to start our work.

lift is being driven by remote control!

Not a fast looking rudder

and certainly not an efficient prop!

Some of our projects included:

• new bottom paint
• service the sail drives
• new paint and epoxy coating on the sail drives
• new zincs
• we wanted to create a new sail drive cover and cut out the old rubber cover plate
• wash, compound, polish and wax the hulls.......and then it two more times!
• paint on a new boot stripe
• change the gear oil in Dingh-go
• fix a few of our gel coat boo-boos
• clean and oil the teak
• clean the driving canvas and waterproof it

We will let the pictures tell the story:

after a power wash

let the work begin

Anne working with our new buffer

first attempt for a sail drive cover

with bottom paint on

sail drive with the epoxy coat

preparing for boot stripe

paint on the hull

cleaning up the tape

fine tuning the stripe

Along the way we met some new friends that were doing the same as us.....getting ready for the winter and cleaning their boat.  One auto was disrupting the process of putting "Felix the Cat" in the water so Neil just went right over the car!  It was quite a sight.  We also caught up with Carina as they drop the hook just outside the marina and came in for burgers one night.

look out below!

sv Carina

Last Friday we put Nati back in the water.....what do you think?