The saying is that the two best days of a sailor’s life
is the day he buys a boat and the day he sells the boat. Conversely the two worst days of a sailor’s
life is the hauling and launching of the boat.
This blog is dedicated to some things we have learned to help make these
processes less stressful.
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| Carl in the engine room |
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| carl's engine room shoes |
One important
thing is that we do weekly maintenance of the engines and systems. We plan on a day of the week, if we are
making passage on that day we do it at first anchorage. Our day is Sunday. Our weekly maintenance includes checking the
belts on the engines and alternators, check the oil, check transmission fluid,
check the Racor filters, check bilges for water, spray WD-40 bolts and valves
and manipulate the raw water thru hulls on the sail drives. Carl wears throw away surgical booties in the
engine room, no dirty footprints on deck!
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| carl lubricartes all the locks |
The next item is the dingy locks, we have 4 with matching keys as one
need’s to lock gas tank and engine to the dingy and we have two locking cables,
a 30 ft. and a 6ft. for locking to docks or trees, these are given a spray of
WD-40. This lesson was learned as in
Antigua we needed to have the outboard repaired and the lock was frozen and
bolt cutters had to be found. We also
now carry bolt cutters! The main saloon
lock we also WD-40. The outside decks
are cleaned with Greased Lightning, Bar Keepers Friend, and Mr. Clean
Erasers. Bar Keepers Friend comes in a
cardboard can, not good on a boat if it gets wet it disintegrates so we put it
in a cleaned plastic Parmesan Cheese container which we can sprinkle it
from. The rest of the week the deck gets
a good rinse with water. Once every six
months the stainless is polished with Prism Polish and the fiberglass table and
vertical surfaces are cleaned and Star Bright polished. Maintenance on the interior includes washing
down all the walls and overhead with vinegar, this helps against mold. The heads get vinegar put in which cuts
crystals and leaves the toilet bowl clean and white. Once in a while we add veg. oil to head to
lubricate the valves. The floors are vacuumed and swiffered to rid of sand and
dust. All thru-hulls are manipulated and
returned to either open or closed position depending on their purpose. Another metal cleaner we have on board is Never
Dull which comes in a metal can which will rust so we remove and put into a
plastic jar.
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| maintenance supplies |
Haul Out:
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| The boat is power washed when hauled |
The day before the boat is hauled we change the
oil and oil filters, we change the racor filters, the jib is taken off the
roller furling. We wash the boat with
fresh water, fill and drain the holding tanks with fresh water. The boat is power washed and chocked by the
yard then strapped down with large ratchet straps attached to 6ft drilled in
screws to the ground. We put corks (think
of all the wine you drink) in all the thru-hulls on the exterior of the boat as
well as shutting all the thru-hulls from the inside.
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| Leslie with wine and corks in thru hulls while sanding |
The Bimini is removed and stored inside, the
mainsail we leave tied in her sail cover.
During storage, the impellers in the raw water pumps are removed and the
raw thru hulls are removed and soaked in vinegar to remove the scale inside them.
We also change the sail drive oil and the outboard lower unit oil. The engines are back flushed with a vinegar
solution with a little Rule 50 pump into a 5 gal spackle bucket and the
solution goes round and round for about an hour. The fuel polishing system is
run for a hour or so. We remove all the
lines we can and soak them in fabric softener and fresh water then store
inside. We do the same to all the lines
we can pull and reach that stay on the mast by putting as much as we can in the
5 gal. bucket with solution to soak. We
wrap tools in lightly oil soaked rags to reduce rust and keep parts moving. We
pickle the water making system.
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| all hatches have sun shades |
We
bought car sunshades and cut them to fit each hatch. This helps to reduce sun damage to cushions
and mattresses and actually keeps the cabins cooler when closed up. By
doing all this, and there are probably things I missed we are so used to doing
this now, we save ourselves a lot of work and possible problems when we launch. Our boat is usually left on the hard for 3to
4 months. The last thing we do is hang
Sun Pac, a mildewcide; we hang one in each pontoon, and one in the main
saloon. We also put Roach Puff in the
corner of cabinets and under the sink.
All this discourages critters from taking up residence in our absence.
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| Frolic heads for the water |
Launch: Basically we put all the pieces we have removed
back in the engines, do a normal weekly maintenance and the engines are good to
go. We run the sheets thru the cam cleats and replace any that
look iffy. Put on Bimini and sails etc. The major part of launching is painting the
bottom. This year we added two pounds of cayenne pepper to the bottom
paint. We will see how that works, as of
two months we have no growth on the bottom.
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| New screens on foward hatch |
Misc: Most charter
boats come with no screens. We refitted
all the hatches with Bomar screens that fit around the hatch. They come with screens and sunshades. Our Lagoon has two hatches in the main saloon
that are vertical and off size so I made screens for them with toggle holders,
makes them easy to undo to pass thru the windless remote. The refrigeration on our boat is front
opening, inefficient for 12 volt so I attached thick clear plastic to each
shelf to close over the space between shelves, now when I open the door the
cool stays in and I only open the cover on the shelf I need. It keeps the power usage low and the food
from spoiling. We run all our systems on
two solar panels.
Just wanted to share some of the chore side of living on
a boat, we still have the sun and fantastic water to jump into when things get
hot. Wish you were here!
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| Enjoying Sailing |
