currently at:  Hague Marina, Myrtle Beach, SC
current date: 26 May 2005

Whew! We are all ready to be hauled out; after that, we have one more day's worth of cleaning, covering, and winterizing before we leave Windom. With the lessons in mind from last time, we have been trying to ensure a less painful start to our next cruising adventure.

Our first and biggest project was to rebed one of the shroud stanchions - this is where one of the cables holding the mast in place attaches to the hull. Sometime during the last storage period it sprung a leak, and the water that trickled in whenever it rained caused some damage to the interior and ruined the books we had on the shelf next to the backing plate. As part of that project we detensioned all the standing rigging - fortunately, without the stress from the sails the mast does ok standing up on its own!

We took down the jib, which we also did last time, and the furling main as well, which we had not done (we had left it rolled into the mast). One reason we removed the main was so that we could remove all the running rigging to store it below - the elements were harsh on our halyards and sheets, and we'd ended up having to take them to a laundromat to clean off all the slimy mildew.

Since we're at a dock with ample freshwater, I scrubbed down the exterior teak with teak cleaner and then gave everything a few coats of oil. Not that it will last very long, but it should help. After our horrible experience with using so-called long-life tape to cover the teak (which ended up drying and peeling off in some places, and becoming wedded to the finish in a gluey mass in others) we will try to cover as much as we can under tarps. (We were unable to find shrinkwrap services here, alas.)  But even if the teak weathers, we won't have the tedious task of scraping paint (and tape residue) now that we've gone to oil - another scrub with the teak cleaner should be all that's needed. The rubber tubes of the dinghy and the gelcoat of the deck should also benefit from being covered. We bought big, thick tarps with a silvery finish; we haven't yet figured out how we're going to affix them, but hopefully we'll come up with something. Covering the boat should also help control the temperature fluctuation in the interior.

To keep our batteries from going dead - they will have to keep the bilge pump going, to drain out any water that leaks in from rainstorms - we have left one solar panel uncovered and hooked up through the regulator. Last time we counted on the AGM batteries' reputation for holding a charge; this time, we're making darn sure we have charging in place.

One of the big recommissioning chores we had last time was cleaning the extremely foul formaldehyde residue from the interior; we had closed things up fairly tightly and hung these chemical things on the yard's advice. This time, following different advice, we will be trying to ventilate the boat as much as we can, hoping that air circulation will keep things from growing too much. We've been spraying each compartment with a Chlorox solution as they are cleaned out, to retard mold and mildew; a woman who works here will check things out every few months for us.

One thing we won't have to do when we recommission is bottom paint. This paint doesn't lose its effectiveness out of the water, so hopefully it will be good for another year. We will have to repair the gouges we put in the keel when we ran aground entering Dollar Harbour, though, and I suppose we will have to repaint the very bottom of the keel - although frankly, we usually manage to scrape it all off so soon by running aground, it hardly seems worth it!

Something we have to do this time that we didn't do last time is winterize. It freezes here, although not too cold and not too hard. We've winterized the watermaker, but all our other systems have to wait until we get hauled out, which is supposed to happen today. We are crossing our fingers, but not holding our breath. This is a small operation, here, and right now the single aged Travelift is occupied by a powerboat which has some sort of prop problem. (And in fact, we have just found out that we won't be hauled until tomorrow - if we're lucky. Grr.)

On the other hand, it's a fairly pleasant place to hang out and work. The marina is nothing more than a loop cut into the bank of the ICW, which is a canal at this point rather than a natural river. It's been run by the same family since it was built in the 1950s, and although it could be turned into a much fancier operation with application of money and energy, the owner seems content to keep it small and simple. Although we're not far from the strip highway (and there's a loaner car - actually an old rustbucket minivan - for use in getting there) it is quiet and peaceful here. The island in the middle of the loop insulates us from the wakes and noise of the ICW. We have been visited a few times by the resident alligator, who floats up next to the hull, hoping to be fed. By some miraculous stroke of luck we have timed our visit before the gnat and mosquito season; it gets hot during the day but is cool enough at night that we have been using our quilt.

But we are anxious to get going, especially since each accomplished task leaves Windom a less pleasant place to live. We'll head to Florida to pick up the RV (which will no doubt require a bit of work to make livable again!), then it's back to Colorado.