Boat Yard Blues

The Haul-Out

On April 2^nd we left Fort Pierce Municipal Marina with Branko and Maggie as crew to assist us with the narrow approached to the haul out basin at Riverside Marina.  I explained to Jason who drove the 70 ton travel lift that I could not watch them lifting our boat. He responded with a laugh “I don’t like to watch either”!  The glint in his eye reassured me he was joking.  At this point I handed Ted the camera and went inside to wait while they lifted, moved and blocked our boat. We were officially “dirt dwellers” again and had to climbed a ladder to get on the boat, on “the hard”. We picked Fort Pierce because of the proximity of our Cummins engine mechanic who would arrived to rebuilt our engine with new liners and pistons. 

By the end of the long month we had re-fibreglassed our top skylounge deck, rebuilt and repainted our engine, painted the topsides of the boat, lightly sanded and repainted the antifouling bottom coat, replaced our sea strainers and completed some maintenance repairs needed on the hull. We completed this with a record breaking heat wave for Florida in April. Temperatures reached 30 degrees Celsius (90+ F). The emails home fell on deaf ears as everyone continue to complain about the cold in Canada. After 34 brutally long days, to the amazement of our friends in the yard we were done our job list and ready to be splashed. It is said that a boat yard project never starts or finishes on time but long hours and perseverance we proved them wrong! We took 2 half days off to get supplies but otherwise we worked from dawn till 6:00pm and then trotted off the showers at the marina where we had a daily shower which disgustingly smelled like sulphur. We called it the spa treatment which made it a bit more bearable! 

We managed to take some time in the evenings to get to know others in the yard. One night we had a cocktail party on Boatel one night, forgetting for a few hours that we were all on land. Once repainted we celebrated with dinner on the top skylounge deck with Maggie and Branko. We biked to Norris Restaurant for .99 cent beers on those days that it was too hot or we were just too tired to cook.  We stopped early (3:00pm) on our 8^th wedding anniversary and bike to the restaurant to sit on the patio at Harbourside Marina for a delicious seafood dinner.

Now with confidence in Jason having watched him park boats in the yard like an expert valet driver, I was able to watch as they picked up Boatel I off her jack stands and launch her. All of our friends in the yard were at the dock and cheering as we backed away from the basin and headed out of the channel. We had already smudged the fresh paint job on the hull with the straps from the travel lift but we were again afloat which is all that mattered. We left with Dennis our mechanic to do a sea trial with our newly rebuilt engine and headed to the neighbouring marina to drop him off and fuel up. Once at the marina we quickly discovered how tired we both were and that we needed time to relax after a long brutal month in the yard. We went to the swimming pool to relax before dinner and early bedtime. The next two days preparing, cleaning and cooking.  We secured our new BBQ, reinstalled the radar and prepare the boat for an outside run up the coast.