Haulout 102: Life On the Hard

Jan 28

Lifting a boat out of the water is the TraveLift’s job, the easy part of a haulout. The human work comes while we’re on the hard.

SV Hanalei is now on dry land. To be precise, her winged keel rests on a couple of timbers on dry land. The rest of her twenty-eight tons of fiberglass and iron is held up by two I-beam cradles and a half-dozen steel stands, all fine-tuned by massive wooden wedges pounded into place.*

*Description courtesy of Stephan, Chief Engineer.

The overall impression is an erector-set version of Noah’s Ark.

To climb onto and off of our home, the yard has supplied a steel staircase that almost reaches our stern. Traversing the gap between staircase and deck requires a leap of faith: over a fender, up two transom steps with handholds and over a lifeline.

I might be getting cranky, but I said I’d keep the whining down.

Living in a boatyard is pretty much what I expected.

Flamenco Marina’s yard (astillero) is an obstacle course of stands and scaffolding to climb over and around. The ground is strewn with paint cans, trash cans and soda cans. Looped hoses and discarded rags soften the look of makeshift sawhorse workbenches and work tables.

Among the items to dodge, duck, or step over are discarded jet skis, deflated dinghies, and old diesel engines bolted to pallets.

It prompts the question, What the hell happened here?

Where I see precarious negotiation of life-threatening objects, Stephan is in his element. To him, it’s a playground of interesting, maybe-useful-someday-for-something stuff that’s reminiscent of his garage shop.

Clearly, there’s no female supervision.

Day 1 - Clean the Hull

All boats need to haul out periodically, as we did two years ago in Cartagena. If we’re lucky, hauling out has three goals, to clean, paint and maintain hard-to-reach areas. If we’re not so lucky, add repairs to the list.

SV Hanalei was anchored in Ecuador alone for nearly a year. Because of that, our barnacle infestation is abnormal. We don’t usually linger in tropical waters without so much as a joyride and they’ve taken advantage of that hospitality.

First, the boat is pressure-washed. That blasts off the mud and algae but doesn’t make a dent in the barnacles. Removing them is a three-person scraping job.

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The cleaner SV Hanalei’s bottom gets, the filthier our home. Each trip up the staircase brings more barnacle detritus and dirt from every other project in the yard.

The afternoon is full of noise: compressors, grinding, sanding, drilling, and the constant warning beep that trucks and cranes are on the move. Once everyone leaves to make it home by curfew, it’s replaced by birdsong. An evening breeze whiffles through tarps, clangs empty masts and adds another layer of grit to every surface of the boat and, occasionally, our supper.

Day 2 - Paint the Hull

You’ve already seen the damage unchecked barnacles can do. In theory, anti-fouling paint is toxic to these squatters. At best, it holds them off for a couple of years before the barnacles win out and the process is repeated.

Clean. Paint. Maintain.

The keel gets special treatment, a sanding with a grinder back to bare metal. Under the Chief Engineer’s supervision, our friends first apply epoxy primer. Those other spots used up the extra primer.

Meanwhile. . .

Did I mention that water is strictly rationed? We don’t want to fill the bilge, which triggers the automatic pump to discharge gray water directly onto whatever–or whoever–is below.

I consider washing dishes outside in the dark and quickly reject it as extreme. Instead, Stephan carries down and carefully dumps bucket after bucket of used dishwater.

Later, I consider making my way downstairs, maneuvering through who-knows-what-all to a bathroom that is probably locked. How much does our toilet’s holding tank hold, really? Do the benefits of avoiding incontinence outweigh the mortifying risk of over-effluence?

This is the philosophical side of living on the hard.

Day 3 - Still Painting the Hull

The guys roll on two coats of anti-fouling paint.

I don’t want to see barnacles for at least another year.

Another Fauna Invasion

Last night Stephan chased off a curious raccoon that had already negotiated the staircase, breached the cockpit and poked its nose into the galley.

Does this happen in normal life?

Sorry. I said I wouldn’t whine. Much.

(But it IS hot.)

Seriously, why did we haul the boat?

Oh, yeah.

Clean. Paint.

I repeat it like a mantra, trying to get into it. Maintain.

Days 3-5 - Maintain the Prop and Bow Thruster

We’ll always have maintenance. First, the propeller. The professionals already cleaned it and applied several coats of PropSpeed, an anti-fouling paint designed for propellers.

Then came the lockdown weekend.

The yard was closed but Stephan was allowed to work. He changed the zinc anode that controls electrolytic corrosion and adjusted the self-feathering propeller blades.

I can’t wait to see our speed increase.

While he was at it, he changed the zincs on the rudder, too.

Striking difference, huh? Protection AND the steering won’t be so stiff.

I’m starting to see the value of this haulout.

Now for the bow thruster.

A bow thruster is a drop-down propeller that swings the bow to port or starboard as a docking aid. When it comes to parallel parking, a bow thruster is to a boat as front-wheel, sideways drive would be to a car. Helpful. Despite being inside the hull for the past year, it also accumulated barnacles. Worse, a telltale streak of oil runs down its side, announcing that its seal is past due for replacement.

Unfathomably, the extra work makes the Chief Engineer happy.