We spent three weeks in the boatyard, an intense time of working on the boat all day, every day. We had a lot of work to do on the bottom - she is developing tiny micro-blisters all over the hull, which we popped, dried, sanded, filled, and primed before painting. Next time we haul we will probably have to grind down to the gel coat and start fresh.
We also noticed some bare spots on the rudder, so we spent time grinding it down. We drilled holes in it to let out water in its core, let them dry, filled it in, did fiberglas on a crack, and primed the whole rudder. We used Interprotect 2000 to prime before painting.
The bottom paint we used is a new brand, called Ameron ABC #3, which we bought over on the French side of St. Martin at the Time Out Boatyard. At $120 a gallon, it is less than half the price of commercial bottom paints, and gets good reports from other cruisers who have used it.
We also had the bowsprit foot platform reworked by Graham in the boatyard, who did a wonderful job of removing the rotten pieces, replacing with teak, and finishing it all with epoxy. We then reinstalled it after taking all the rust off the stainless frame for it. All of the screws that had been holding it in were gone (!), so we replaced all of them.
Lindsey in the boatyard took apart our gear shifter, replaced some worn parts, relubricated it, and put it back together. We were probably going to have a failure on that, as it was getting hard to shift from neutral to forward and reverse. That could have been a real problem underway. He also installed our new transducers for depth and distance in the hull.
We also sanded down our waterline stripe of red, which has been a problem for some time. We primed and just put bottom paint up the side, which now looks much better.
We're back in the water now, anchored in the Lagoon, and waiting for the display unit for our new instrument transducers to come in (only a month and a half late!) so we can install that and be on our way south.
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While we were waiting for our instrument display to arrive, from France no less, by ship, the international Heineken regatta was held in St. Martin. Almost 300 boats of all sizes and classes raced from March 6 - 9 in fine weather with crews from France, England, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S.. Larry volunteered to drive a water taxi for the racers to get to and from shore before and after the races. We both helped deliver these big dinghies, with 30 and 40 horse power outboards, on an ocean run from Philipsburg to Marigot. Larry got very used to that much power in a small boat; our little Portabote with a 3 hp engine was quite a step down after that experience.
