41 44.673N 012 15.315E Ostia Boat Yard

Pipedream
Tue 1 Jun 2010 16:39
The boat is out of the water blocked up and almost ready for storage. We are trying to eat up all the perishable food left and clean and repair everything we can before we leave. Tomorrow will be a boat work day. Scrub the decks, bilges, and oh yes the toilet... oh joy. I was hoping to get away not painting the bottom. They pulled it out and not too many barnacles but after a good pressure washing most of the antifouling paint went. They did a nice job of lifting and blocking the boat. I will be able to sleep nights when I get home. Zincs (sacrificial anodes on the bottom to keep the hull from rusting) were all still there maybe half of them need to be replaced. At any rate I need to repaint the bottom. The Micron ultra white held up much better than I had expected. In the water under constant use since April of last year. I will use it again. Growth here in the Med is nothing like Florida... or maybe the paint is real good?

I took the outboard into the local mechanic along with the raw water pump that was leaking and giving me some heart burn about running the engine hard. Looks like we got that in just in time as some of the rubber impeller fins had or were starting to break off. The outboard is another issue. I will have to buy the parts in the US and ship them back here... I could maybe have fixed the thing if I had parts... the mechanic looked at it and said to Antony in Italian, "we just fix things here we don't change parts...", when have you ever heard that in the US?

Antony leaves on the 3rd and I will go with him to the airport and then catch a train into Rome and then Florence for a couple of three days of R&R... a culture fix. I even have a hotel booked and everything. As our Badger boat friends said it is time to 'take a vacation from sailing'.

I am ready to get back to Florida and the comforts of my happy home. Both Katie and Chris will be there for the summer!

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