On the hard

My previous attempt to write this entry was lost by the poor internet connection here……

Last Friday morning I was wanting to leave Spanish Water early in the morning for the trip to Willemstad. When I looked out the window the sky was dark and a squall was heading for us. So I sat out the shower, with some nasty wind gusts (after a week of no wind in the anchorage).

But, once it cleared up the trip to Willemstad was nice and easy. The bridge opening went smooth and came to Curacao Marine at 11:30. It wasn’t quite clear where I was supposed to dock, so I anchored and took the kayak in to the yard. Once I found the right person to talk to I was told I would be the first one after lunch.

The lift out of the water went nice and smooth. They use something that looks like an oversized hydraulic boat trailer, behind a big John Deere tractor. The bottom was pressure washed for a good hour and most growth came off nicely. Compliments to the previous owner for a great bottom job, hope I can get the same kind of result this time.

Yesterday I spent all day cleaning the water line (the realy nasty green growth there was hard to get off, took some bleach to fight that) and scraping of the remaing barnacles (left at places where the pressure washer could not reach).

Today we have been having a number of showers, they start to interfere with the work since I can only start epoxying (some minor repairs) on a clean and dry surface.

The prop is scraped clean, and tomorrow morning they guys from the work shop will that off. That should allow me take the cutlass bearing out, which I plan on replacing.

Still have not figured out how the boot strip is going to look: don’t want to spend too much time on taping and painting different layers. Getting a good layer of bottom paint has the highest priority.