On Monday morning Steve went ashore early to talk to the yard – Chesapeake Boat Works where we are being lifted out, when we spoke to them a couple of months ago they said to let them know nearer the time to arrange a date etc so we were expecting to have to wait a few days but he came back and said that they were going to lift us at 1 pm – they could have done it at 9am but as we had to lift the dinghy on deck etc and I was still in bed when Steve went ashore he opted for the 1 pm slot. So we were lifted, the bottom pressure washed off, chocked up, sadly the pressure washer didn't get the barnacles off so we set to scraping them off. We also found a good amount of Oysters growing between the rudder and the skeg along with a small army of baby crabs – lovely!

Waiting to be lifted out.

 

Just a little bit dirty!

 

 

No wonder the depth sounder wasn’t reading very well!

We have worked hard, the bottom has one coat of paint on and the topsides have had a clean and polish now all we have left to do is another coat and wax the top. We’ve decided to go green this time, with added chilli powder which we hope will discourage the growth – the Thai fishermen use it.

We have been really lucky with the weather since we were lifted out, it’s been warm and sunny so we have been able to get on with the work. The yard is very helpful, offering us use of their tools as ours are all 240 and they only have 110 volts here, we can use a 4WD pickup truck to go to the hardware store, do shopping etc. The first time we wanted to use the truck it was being used so one of the yard owners lent us his truck. The showers are hot and clean and there’s a laundry too, we are really pleased with everything and it only costs $10 a day to be out of the water here.  We were planning to go back into the water on Friday but now that storm Sandy is likely we will probably stay out of the water until it has passed.