Late March is a good time to haul out in San Carlos to work on a boat. The Marina Seca there is a large and busy place, but the end-of-season rush hasn't begun so it's easy to schedule a haulout and gather supplies. The weather is generally warm, dry and sunny, yet still cool enough to be comfortable for working. Paint and epoxies spread and dry properly – unlike a couple months later, when the heat starts rising rapidly and paint begins to clump before you can brush it on.
Once the good folks at Marina Seca rolled The Fox down the boulevard and got her positioned on jackstands in the yard, they pressure washed the hull and we examined the dings, nicks and marine growth on the hull. Overall it looked in better condition than we'd expected, but the marine growth in the hard-to-reach bow thruster tubes was so extensive, the wee props were completely buried. Check out what the thrusters look like when clean…and what they looked like after 2 years in progressively warmer waters:
Yeeeeah. Looks like a reef to me. Good thing we didn't have to file an environmental impact statement before disturbing that little ecosystem in there.
We saw the typical level of growth of acorn barnacles on the propeller and up the drain tubes, as well as general slimage along the water line where vegetative matter really enjoys the sunlight. Plus there was a wee rubbed place on the forward base of the keel where I'd momentarily nudged us aground on one of Topolobampo's shifting sand bars last year. Ahem.
Anyway, the job of sanding, filling and repainting the hull appeared to GB to be a straightforward and uneventful project – and so in fact it was.
to be continued…
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