When you commit yourself to a seasonal life afloat you have to change your way of viewing everyday events and perceived hardships. The good days are wonderful, full of sunshine, calm seas and a wind on the beam. The bad days seem to be magnified by bad weather, rolling boats and never ending rain. We just have to remember that bad days afloat still outperform a day at the office.
Back to the never ending rain, however. It is now six days and counting of steady rain. Thirty four more and we qualify as an ark as we have the two boat dogs onboard. We came to Dennis Point Marina in St. Mary's, Maryland to do work on the boat that required us to be up on the hard, or out of the water for you landlubbers. Putting on a new coat of bottom paint, putting in a new thru hull raw water intake and replacing zincs are task for dry land. We also use this time to polish the props for better efficiency. To replace the zincs you find a five gallon bucket to use as a seat and try to get comfortable while the rain runs off the hull onto your head, neck and back. Unlike shaft drive boats we have to disassemble the folding prop assembly and pull the prop hub, altogether not a tough task if it is 80 and sunny and you have a cold beer to cheer on the work. When it is 52 and raining it is just work.
The other job while on shore is to add another layer of bottom paint so little sea creatures won't use the boat as a new home. They slow the boat down considerably and if not removed regularly they are an absolute bear to get off the hull. The big problem we have is that you can't paint in the rain. Our plan was to arrive on Monday at high tide, get hauled right away and sand and scrape the hull Monday evening. We would paint on Tuesday and use Wednesday to install a new thru hull and replace the zincs. Well, here it is Saturday and we are still up on the hard. No painting yet and it looks like we may have to wait for early next week to have a good dry day. We keep telling ourselves that it still beats a day at the office.
What, you say? How bad can it be, really? You are on a boat getting ready to head to the Caribbean. Sunshine, palm trees, umbrella drinks and girls in bikinis all winter long. Well, here is the downside. We don't have a 50 amp shore power hook up here so we are connected by an extension cord to a wall socket on the side of a building. 15 amps at 120 volts. Sounds good at home but it won't run our water heater so no hot showers and no hot water for washing dishes either. We cannot run the air conditioning so the humidity is overwhelming and we are both sprouting mold patches. We can't run the generator to make power because it needs cooling seawater so it only runs while we are in the water.
The one bright spot was the arrival of Dave & Donna, our Caribbean buddy boaters aboard "Pas de Deux", a Catana 471 (another catamaran) who are also on the hard here. Everyone is getting their boats ready to go for the November departure to the British Virgin Islands. Last night they joined us for a neighborhood spaghetti social. The four of us make up the whole neighborhood when the marina office closes at 4:30. On Monday our friends from Canada, Bob & Becky will arrive to finish work on their boat "Our White Magic", another Catana 471. Because the marina has an Acme lift they can haul cats so this yard is a roosting place for catamarans getting ready to go south.
Dave and I did manage to get the hole drilled in the hull for the raw water intake, the thru hull installed and we used the boater's friend, 5200, to seal it in place. Of course I managed to get the 5200 on the cabin sole so Joan is ready for this work to be over.
The props are back on and the thru hull installed. Now if it would just stop raining we could get on with life.
There is one bright spot in all of the rain; the dogs are in heaven. American boat dogs love nothing more than the water even if it is just 4 inches of water swamping a huge field. They have run till they can run no more and they are a pair of wet, ratty looking mutts but they are in heaven.