Day 214, Year 7: Back in the Water
Date: Saturday, June 9, 2012
Weather: Mostly Sunny Day
Location: At Heather and Jed’s in E Falmouth, MA
Windbird is back in the water. For the first time since we have owned her,
we were not there for splash down. The yard at Fiddler’s Cove is great but
they are very much into doing the work themselves without owners being
around. I have watched them put many boats in the water and felt confident
that things would be fine, but we did get a bit of jolt when we arrived at
the marina this afternoon and walked down the dock to Windbird. There was a
three inch-wide by eighteen inch-long scrape on the aft quarter. It
appeared that the paint had been scraped off. But when I applied the
AwlCare to see if I could work out the scrape, it soon became evident that
we had rubber from the dock on Windbird and not paint from Windbird on the
dock. That was a huge relief. Tomorrow I will spend my day there cleaning
out the anchor chain locker and under the v-berth. So things are on
schedule and we should be ready to motor to Woods Hole on Monday.
Mark woke up this morning feeling terrible. He felt like he had a killer
cold so he didn’t go to work. I gave him some Ibuprofen and by noon he was
feeling much better. Heather and I worked in the garden all morning
planting and mulching and in the afternoon Mark was able to go to the boat
with me. We got the first coat of anti-fouling paint on the bottom and we
pulled the anchor rope out of the anchor chain locker and out onto the deck
so it could be sprayed down. It was caked with Madagascar red mud, but now
both the rope and the exterior of Windbird are clean. Mark plans to go to
work tomorrow and I will spend the day at the boat doing all of the cleaning
jobs that take lots of water. Once we are in Woods Hole we are on a mooring
and have to transport water to the boat from the dock on land. Big cleaning
jobs are just not possible then, so tomorrow is my only chance.
