6/15/2010 - Annual Scrubdown

I don't know what I did to deserve such a good first mate. If I could clone Lulu and sell the reproductions I'd make a fortune. While I'm down below composing this blog, what do you suppose she's doing? If you guessed "scrubbing down the cabin and deck", you'd be right. Look at this:

And, just so you don't think I'm TOTALLY useless, I did unload all this junk off the decks to make cleaning easier. And I'll load it back on deck as well, but that's mostly because I'm kind of anal about how on-deck stuff is stowed.

Okay, truth be told, she actually removed the dodger but, honest, I really did unload all the rest of the stuff.

Did some research on applying bottom paint where there wasn't any before. The bottom paint is very expensive and we really don't want it to just slough off once we raise the waterline. Got lots of good info from the Pettit paint website. E-mailed River Bend Marine to make sure they have all the various unguents and ointments that Pettit recommends in stock when we get there. We could get the products cheaper on-line but one of the courtesies, if not requirements of doing your own work at River Bend is that you purchase your products from them. Seems only fair as his guys aren't making any money while we're doing our own work. Heck, there are even yards that won't allow boat owners to do their own work. Rest assured that we will never find ourselves in one of those yards.

So, Lulu has the topsides all spiffy. Next month we'll get the bottomsides equally spiffy and then we'll be good to go.

Oh, by the way, I did give Lulu a little reward when she was almost done: A bag of Doritos "Last Call Jalapeno Poppers" tortilla chips and a 16 oz. can of Budweiser "Chelada" (Bud, clamato juice, lime and salt). Of course, since it's unseemly to drink alone, I joined her. We sat on the foredeck eating our chips and drinking our Cheladas and enjoying the rare sunny, windless afternoon. Life is good.