Busy in the boatyard

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We and Luna Ray are still poled up in the sky at Cairns Sailing Squadron boat yard.

We have fallen into a routine for getting work done on the boat. We wake around 7 am, usually to the unsettling tremors that's made by passing trucks. Breakfast is usually followed by me doing some work like sanding or some activity that we all do to tire Alex out. This could be a walk through the dusty industrial estate to a shop for supplies, or maybe we will take the dinghy up the river to Marlin Marina and visit the Lagoon.

During our stay we put our new dinghy wheels on, and with the dinghy back in the water I paddled over to meet Naomi and Alex who were getting on at the pontoon. As Naomi was reaching for the rope, there was a sudden splash and I looked up to see Alex falling into the water. He was flat out on his back looking equally upset and surprised - luckily he already had his life jacket on.

Then we return about midday, and put Alex to bed after lunch. This is now our only opportunity to work together and lately its been putting a coat of paint on the boat - numerous layers of primers, then a full coat of "intertuf" which gave the hull a nice metalic silver colour, and the last 2 days have been antifoul (Ecofleet 209) which is a thick tar like paint to stop marine growth on the hull. One of these full coats can take us 3-4 hours and fortunately Alex has often slept until we finish. After tidying up and showers we are lucky if the sun hasn't already set by the time we have a drink perched up high in the cock pit.

Then we settle down to TV and dinner, and often a futile attempt to repair the leak in our hydraulic reservoir. Home living has been a little more taxing. Toilet trips are a hassle of climbing down the ladder and going over to the toilet block so we have taken to using a bucket in the cockpit overnight. And now that we are painting the hull we cannot let sink water drain over it so all washing up is collected in a bucket (a different bucket!) and done over at the amenities block in the morning.

The hydraulic ram was indeed completed by friday, but then we have had three days of long weekend, but this morning (Tuesday) Drew from Norship came to install it. We did a lot of the preparation work for this ourselves - Naomi thought it funny that he would leave me "homework" to do.

So now we have the lifting keel working again, have a few more litres of antifoul to slap on, and we are booked on thursday 10 am to be put to float again.



Luke

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