6/1/2010 - The time is winding down

June is my last month at the Aquarium. The plan is to go upriver to River Bend boatyard to haul the boat out for some maintenance sometime after July 1st. Looking at the tide tables, it looks like that could happen as early as the end of the first week but if we wait until sometime between Monday the 12th and Thursday the 15th we'll have an extra couple of feet of water at high tide. If you were reading our blog last time we hauled you may recall that we left a keel trail in the mud.

This time we're riding a few inches lower the we did then, so we can use all the depth we can get. And, since we're paid up at the marina until July 15 there's no huge hurry to get out before that. No sense in paying double moorage any longer than necessary. Why, you may ask, do we need to pick certain days since there are high tides on every day? Because we need the high tide to happen during the boatyard's working hours.

We plan to be out for about a week. We have to raise the waterline which simply means that we paint anti-fouling bottom paint higher on the hull so that all the parts that are submerged are protected from biofouling (barnacles and such attaching to the bottom). Then we'll need to paint a new boot stripe, the stripe of paint between the top of the bottom paint and the rest of the hull. It doesn't really serve any purpose that I know of other than to make the boat look good. It can also make a high-sided boat like ours not look quite so tall. Purely aesthetics.

While we're out we'll also recoat all of our exterior woodwork with Cetol Natural Teak finish. We're really happy with how well it's worn over this past year.

This was taken August 26, 2009, almost a month after we got out of the yard:

And this was taken just the other day, about 9 months later:

So we're pretty happy with the Cetol so far.

Before we haul out we still have a few jobs to do. I need to wire the solar cells, change out the "stainless steel" screws on the mast steps which are turning out to be considerably less stainless than advertised, change the engine oil and filter, add another fairlead* and cam cleat* for the staysail furling line, order a back-up computer, hopefully determine whether or not the SSB radio is transmitting satisfactorily or not (if not, it may just wait until we're down in the Bay Area when we can get help from the folks at HF Radio Onboard in San Leandro), figure out where to stow the remaining 3/4" manila line that we got to make fenders out of (there's still quite a bit), install two anchoring/mooring cleats on the foredeck, tack some sheet copper to the bowsprit so that the new abchor doesn't chew up the wood, make sure we have plenty of spare fuel, water and oil filters onboard, get some boat cards printed up, install about a half a dozen barrel bolts in various places, put protective tape over all the cotter pins so the sharp little points aren't going to snag us, get new flares (we have two sets of flares that are in primo condition but, unfortunately, outdated, which does not mean that they're no good by the way), and a few other odds and ends. We also need to rent a car and make an overnight run to the valley to get a few things that we can't get here or that Cody is holding for us at her house.

Once we're back in the water we'll probably just stay anchored out in the river while we get everything lashed down and secured for sea. Then we'll just watch the weather and, at the first good opening, we'll head under the bridge and make for Coos Bay. Anchoring out will help us make the transition from marina bums to cruising bums. It's going to be weird to actually finally get underway. But good weird.

*translations:

fairlead: this is just any of a number of devices designed to help a line run in a certain direction and possibly change direction with a minimum of friction. In this case they are very smooth eyes that the furling line runs through from the furler to the cockpit following a path along the bulwarks that keeps it out of the way. For the absolute minimum friction, blocks with ball-bearing sheaves could be used, but that'd be overkill in this instance.

cam cleat: This is just basically a pair of jaws with ridges on the inside. A line can be jammed down between the jaws to hold it in place without having to tie it off or wrap it around a horn cleat.