After far too little sleep, we picked up the anchor and moved alongside at 0630, awaiting the yard opening. We had booked a package of lift out, power wash and launch, but we were limited to 2 ours only in the slings. In discussions with the yard guys, they told us that if we were there early, they would pick us up to give us a bit more time ashore. As we wanted to repair the over scrubbed waterline (fault of the pillock in Rodney Bay who filled the marina with heavy dirty oil just upwind of us…. twice!), this seemed useful.

Lifted at 0715 instead of 0800, the boat suspended above our heads, we had it scraped and washed by 0815. The guys were good, and we helped by using scrapers and brushes when the power wash was not pointing in our direction. This left Ali just about enough time to clean and abrade the boot top (waterline), give it an acetone wash to take off the contaminants, and give it a nice clean coat of scrubbable anti-fouling.

At the same time, I was scraping and sanding the propeller down, putting on a new anode, filling the internals and then covering the whole thing with waterproof grease (sadly, the horrendously expensive “Propspeed” anti-fouling that we had applied in Faro was not up to the dastardly little creatures in the Caribbean waters, and did not do what it said on the tin, so we are back to our original and half-effective treatment of much lather!).

We failed to take pictures of the scene, but we leave it to your vivid imaginations. We had not taken a great deal of trouble with the coiffure at 0600, and had been a bit busy since. Both of us were completely covered in flecks of barnacle, drips of blue anti-fouling or green slime, wet from the power wash “rain”, and – one of us – slabbered with grease from fingers to nose (I was never the neatest worker, and grease and sikalflex mastic just seem to spread around my body like lava running downhill).  The yard folk took pity on us and allowed us to stay in the dock once we had launched the boat whist we showered and scrubbed flesh (ouch!).

They were really helpful and seemed very competent and careful. Should we decide to leave to boat here, we would feel quite comfortable…

Watergaw