Flora and fauna just love boats bottoms.  So much so that we spend a lot of time painting horribly thick and gloopy anti-fouling paint on the hull.  This paint gradually erodes, molecule by molecule as the boat moves through the water and as the paint slowly falls off the various creatures lose their grip and fall off.  If we didn’t do this we would end up with so much vegetation on the hull the boat would move much more slowly through the water.

Hold that thought.

There is a small device with a little wheel on it that is posted through the hull at the front.  As the boat moves through the water the wheel turns and the speed at which it turns tells us how fast the boat is going and how far we have gone.  This is called “the log”. 

The log doesn’t get painted with antifouling because it would stick and stop being any use.

Hold that thought.

When we are in a marina and the boat isn’t moving the little greeblies all have a field day and grow on anything they can.  We know from experience that we only need to be tied up for two days in warm water and the log gets jammed by growing things.  We usually forget though and set off into the wide blue yonder only to find within three minutes that we have no speed input.  One of other of us then goes into the forepeak cabin with a very large, very absorbent cloth that Carols Mum bought in Tenerife years ago, now, not surprisingly, known as ‘Your Mothers cloth’ by Mike and ‘My Mothers cloth’ by Carol.  Said person unscrews the floorboards, unscrews the through hull fitting just far enough then, eases it out with one hand and replacing it with a matching stopper as quickly as possible.  If you don’t get that stopper in quickly enough you have a veritable flood into the bilges through the 5cm diameter hole.  Hence the need to Carol’s Mother’s cloth. 

Hold that thought and put it together with all the others.  You can see trouble looming.

For once we remembered and yesterday decided to take the log out and clean it in advance of our departure.  Good thing too since the yacht had been stationary in the marina for a month.  It had sprung the most fabulous greeblies.  Fern like, delicate ones, rock hard barnacle like ones and all things in between.  All on a relatively small surface area.