Samaritan gets a Race Scrub (on the cheap......)

Samaritan
Tim Vaughan
Sat 25 May 2019 23:06

The serious racers often have their boats lifted pre-race and have the bottoms pressure washed in order to keep any hull drag to a minimum and, in that way, get the best performance they can out of the boat.

 

Even though Samaritan is not a quick boat, it is always very noticeable how much better she goes with a clean bottom. She’s been back in the water some 8 weeks now and there were signs of algae on the rudders so I wondered if it might be worth giving her a little clean below the water line. There has been a lot of May Bloom in the river this year which won’t have helped.

 

A Race Scrub would cost about £160 (and this was mate’s rates) so I decided to take the boat up the river, find one of the sand banks that appear at low tide and take advantage of the lifting keel and let the boat dry out.

 

As it happened she was pretty clean and what there was came off with a gentle brush. It certainly wasn’t worth paying £160!!

 

It was a surreal experience, walking round the boat in the middle of the river with seals and fish all over the place.

 

 

 

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