I had scheduled hauling out Iris this weekend. She had been in the water for almost two years now and it was becoming quite necessary to get her out of the water to clean her hull and give her a new coat of antifouling. The weather was excellent for the job, dry, windy and almost 20 C. Incredible, but this is end of February!
The guys in charge of the Port Ginesta shipyard had me remove backstay and topping lift and on friday afternoon I manoeuvered Iris into the travelift slip. She was hauled out without problems and driven to an empty spot on the already quite busy shipyard.
First thing I did was giving her a thorough wash with the pressure washer. All algae and some of the previous bottom paint came off easily. Only the sticky barnacles didn�t get off with the pressure washer.
After having her dry overnight, on Saturday morning I manually scraped off all the remaining sealife. Then came the dirtiest part of the job. Using an orbital sander and 80-grit paper we sanded the entire hull bottom once for the fresh bottom paint to stick easily. My colleague Enric came to help me on this dirty job. Even with protective clothing and breathing masks, after a while we both had blue faces. Overall Iris's 31-year-old hull is in perfect shape. Not a sign of osmosis.
On Saturday afternoon Iris was ready for a first coat of bottom paint. I used EU-45 dark blue antifouling. Not expensive, an excellent product and excellent service (thanks! Bill>. On Sunday morning a second coat came on and in the afternoon, just before the first raindrops started to fall, I applied a third coat to the waterline, the keel and the rudder areas.
More pictures of the haulout can be found here.