6th November

12 00 N
61 46 W

Weather; sunny, wind n/a, waves n/a

We have arrived at the end of the working week for the guys in the marina yard so it's time to take stock of what has been achieved this week. Luckily for us the weather has been kind and not been raining at all during the day which means that the scraping, sanding, hosing down and buffing of the hull above the water line have been able to be completed. Rain always stops play on these things so we are counting ourselves very lucky to this point. The marina guys have completed their work and now it's down to Gerry and I to do the painting and finishing off, well to be totally honest it's down to Gerry as he only bought 1 paint roller plus I can't reach as high up the keel as he can (my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)
I've added more photos of the progress to the gallery under the album "haul out" so you can appreciate how far it's come.
Gerry took off early once again to check on the work and to begin with the painting, he has bought 4 gallons of Seahawke anti fouling paint in a dark blue to cover the entire keel. You will notice in the photos that the sanded back keel is red - this was the original keel colour when we bought the boat, I think the previous owners had a thing about red as we even had Tan Bark (a type of red) sails. Neither Gerry nor I were fond of the colour and we changed out the sails for boring off-white ones and at the first hauling to re anti foul the keel we changed the paint colour to blue. It's much easier to get the blue paint everywhere and white sails are also available everywhere should we need to replace or repair them. There are several shades of blue paint available and we went for the darkest one we could find to make certain that it completely covered the red as we had no intention of stripping the paint all the way back to the gel coat. For those of you who followed us last time you might recall that taking it back to gel coat was what we did to our last boat in Carriacou when we ended up looking like smurfs from relocating the blue anti fouling paint from the boat to our clothing, skins, hair and nails - it took forever, a load of elbow grease and a stiff scrubbing brush to get it all off but at least we didn't have any barnacles growing on us!
The guys that did the sanding managed to get all of the old blue paint removed and even managed to sand off some of the red so maybe next time a bit more will come off and eventually we will get back to the gel coat (or the next owner will!) they had then hosed down the keel to get as much of the paint dust off of it as they could and left that to dry overnight. The above water line (that's all the white bit) had been acid washed and the guys had given it a light wax and buff to make it look pretty and hopefully slip through the water a bit quicker. Not to be outdone, Gerry set about stirring up paint and applying the first coat to the rudder and skeg. Once the first coat was on it was time to call it quits for the day, let the paint dry overnight and attack it again tomorrow.
Dale had been released from quarantine and we met up to eat dinner together, going to our favourite cheap spot at the container park. We listened to Dale's experience and frustrations of going back to the States, both he and Lorie have had a tough few months with the world trying to knock them for six but they have survived it all. It came as no great surprise to Gerry and I when at the end of the evening Dale told us that they have decided that they cannot continue on the trip with us to Australia. Given all the obstacles that they have had to overcome (and are still facing) this past year, we were surprised that it has taken them this long to call it a day. As yet we don't know what their plans are but getting home to the States seems the obvious choice for them, I'm sure we will discuss it in more detail tomorrow. Of course we are disappointed not to be able to share the rest of the trip with them and we will miss their company terribly but we do understand and who knows what else is waiting just around the corner to surprise us all, after all this is 2020 and possibly just the prequal to 2021! We do know that they are hauling their boat on Monday - taking our spot in the yard and the apartment as it's the same day that we are due to splash back in the water, but everything else is set in jelly for the moment. It's not going to change our plans too much, we are hanging around Grenada for a bit longer - at least until hurricane season is officially over and done with for the year then we will be setting off for Curacao, as long as it's still open!
So on that note I'll leave this for now and let you know how we go tomorrow.