Getting boat back in shape

Living in a boatyard is not my thing. Especially not in a weather like we had - almost no wind, 36 deg C during the day and 30 at night, 28 if we were lucky. And since there was no wind, there were mosquitoes. But luckily we were back in the water after four days. And in the meantime...

Captain was watching every move, every detail, every thing that was done to the boat. Here is Heron coming out of the water.

The bottom of the boat was like a coral reef - barnacles, anemones, crabs, you name it - it was all there.

The boat was first roughly scrubbed and pressure-washed, right there in slings. After that it was too late to move us, so we spent first night in slings.

Next morning the first thing was removing of rudder. It had play at the lower bearing, it wasn't "sitting tight" any more, so it was time to "retighten" it.

Then the boat was moved to more "permanent" location, away from haul-out pier. It was interesting to watch how precise the guys from boatyard moved such a big thing through other boats. There were moments where we thought - this doesn't fit, it will not go through...

... but then it did!

Then the boat got sanded. The captain personally cleaned and polished the propeller - he wouldn't let anybody else touch it.

After that the boat got two coats of anti-fouling paint and rudder got tightened. After some "diplomacy" (and some additional money) we were "splashed" = put back into the water on Sunday noon. The other option was to wait till Tuesday (Monday was a holiday). After seeing that the slings from travel lift took away quite a lot of our new anti-fouling paint, which obviously wasn't dry enough, we were sorry, we didn't go in a hotel for two days and wait till Tuesday. It wouldn't have cost us much more. Well, we'll be smarter next time...

Maybe you don't recognize this one - it is called Unicorn, and is better known as Black Pearl. Yes, the one from Pirates of Caribbean. It is "parked" in boatyard in Rodney Bay. It looks nice, even from up close.

Our friends Dana and Wayne, that we met in boatyard, and their boat Journey, went into water on Saturday, one day before us. When we came out on Sunday, we anchored in Bay right next to them and we had some nice evenings together.