Its been a nice relaxing month since I got down here, with the exception of a hurricane... But I got my new(er) mainsail up and running and a few test sails with it, here we have the main and the A5 up, rolling along nicely.
On one of these test sails I had a bunch of folks over, and it went great!
Here's more folks up on the bow. I had 12 aboard, and it wasn't too crowded.
But I've been feeling that the boat is decidedly slow. Mostly I attribute it to the fact that I haven't painted the bottom with anti-fouling paint in a long time. It was last done 4 years ago, I think. Brad put really nice fast bottom paint on, and then he hired a diver to rub the paint off the bottom every week, so it was mostly gone by the time I got the boat. I dove and scrubbed and scraped a bunch and put off hauling out and painting because I always had something else to do, and it would usually take me about an hour to get most of the stuff off. But the little residue was still there, and it made the boat slower.
So I finally bit the bullet and hauled out.
Here is Aquila up in the slings. The first try, they didn't have here centered, and one of the lift points maxed out and the keel wouldn't clear the edge, so they had to re-do it. I was a bit surprised at how close it was to not being able to be hauled out. I had about 1 foot of clearance with all the straps at their fully max height. So they could have put smaller straps on, but then the keel wouldn't have cleared the front strap...
So here was are moving the lift and the keel is about 6 inches off the ground.
And there is me next to the keel, for perspective you can see how tall the bottom is, or rather how deep the keel is.
When I clean the bottom, I sort of stand on the boat upside down and scrape the keel, then climb down the keel a bit to get to the bulb. Since I float in the salt water I can use it to be upside down. I also crawl around on the bottom of the boat and use that to help me hold position while scraping. When I got back this summer, the whole boat was covered with really tough barnacles and oysters, and I had to hack at them really hard to get them to let go. It took about 8 hours all told, I think. Hopefully I won't grow oysters anymore.
The pressure wash crew working on the one week growth of grasses and gooseneck barnacles. Its really quite stunning how quick stuff grows here. On the way in I could do about 4 knots with the motor running pretty hard. Amazingly, Despite however much growth there is, I can usually still do half of windspeed with the spinnaker up and the jib for beam reaching. So the boat is really powerful despite having lots of drag.
So I scraped the bottom really good, then sanded the whole boat really good, then put a coat of primer all over everywhere I could find that needed it, then put 3 good thick coats of Sherwin Williams "Ablative Bottom Paint" that is stuff that the US Navy uses on their boats. I managed to get 3 gallons of it a while back, and I have high hopes for it. There is a lot of copper in it, but I added some thinner and then rolled it on and found I had more than I needed. I ended up with about 1/2 a gallon too much, even after putting on 3 full coats and 4 or 5 on the rudders and other places. The lift came to get me on the last day and I put three coats on the places that the stands held the boat up, and on the bottom of the keel. I'm a bit concerned about those, since I didn't have much time to prep those spots, and the paint didn't get much time to dry, but I will dive the boat and see how it ended up later on.
Since the sail drive is made of Aluminum, I had to put a different kind of paint on that, stuff that doesn't have copper in it. And then I put surfboard wax on the propeller, instead of buying really expensive paint for it and having it not work. I've heard people say that waxing the prop is good, or using lanolin, so I'm going to try it. And I can re-do the wax while in the water.
So I was then ready to go back in the water. I had done a few other things while being out. I took off a little metal bracket on the back of the boat that acted as a swim ladder attachment, and I took it off because it was in the way of the dinghy and it was always under water, so it was corroding. I also installed another thru-hull for my speedo transducer. One of the first things I did when I bought the boat was to try and figure out what was wrong with the NKE system, and I troubleshot it to the Speedo unit. It was a simple fix to buy a new one, so I got a paddlewheel unit and when it arrived I tried to install it. But the stupid thing wouldn't fit in the thru-hull. It was designed ever so wrongly. So I tried to modify the thru-hull to make it fit, but that was a big mistake, and I've been paying for it ever since. The thru-hull leaked. Then the water getting in the boat was a nuisance and eventually a hazard. So this time I decided to glue the old one (which, it turns out works just fine and didn't need replacing after all) in its spot and be done with it, and then make a new thru-hull for the new one and I can have both installed and chose which ever one I want whenever I want. Ha! the perfect solution!
When I got set back down in the water I discovered the glued in one was leaking, so I still have some work to do on making it extra water tight. I think I need to get some of that "rescue tape" or some rubber from a bicycle inner tube and wrap the joint up extra tight. Since its not coming out, I don't need to worry about making it hard.
And the final moment! Aquila descending back to her natural domain. I'm anchored out now and tomorrow I'll go for a nice test sail to see how fast I can get up to...
Before I anchored out, I did a bit of a drive around to re-calibrate the speedometer, and in doing this I also cranked the motor up a lot to see how fast I could go. I hit 7 knots under motor, so that's nice. I also have full ballast tanks. Before I was constrained to 4, now its 7. I think I can cruise at 6 pretty easy. In terms of sailing, though, I'll have to find that out tomorrow.
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