M/V MAERIN

Haulout came on Tuesday afternoon, the 5th of May. We arrived at Stansbury on Sunday the 3rd, and had a day to clean up a bit, get home to check out the house, and return Tuesday morning to ready Maerin for some dry time and the short hop across the creek. Haulout went without a hitch, the folks at Markley’s know what they’re doing. Markley’s is a family-run yard, primarily a working yard, so not real big on amenities, but they’re knowledgeable, reasonable, and did what they said they’d do. A thorough pressure wash, and off to set her on the hard and block. The next week’s weather was perfect for our chores, cool temps, sunny skies and low humidity. We started off by acid cleaning the hull to remove the ICW stains and some minor growth, the following day, Wednesday, was spent buffing and waxing from the water line up to the lower rub rail, and on the bow as high as we could reach. The rest of the hull is easier to do from the floating docks at Stansbury. Once the waxing was completed, sanding began, and completed the following day, Thursday. A wash with thinner, and the 1st coat of 6 gallons of paint went on. The color is now black, more by accident than design; I will admit to a mistake in the online ordering, and I missed the error in the order confirmation. Black will be nice for a couple of years! Besides, only about 3 inches of the color is visible, it’s all under water!

Each following day another coat was applied, the 3rd and final coat went on Saturday, with other bottom maintenance tasks completed in between. New oil seal on the thruster shaft, both the main prop and thruster props were cleaned and re-coated with PropSpeed, with the wind gusting up as it was completed, leaving a lot of grit and dust on the surface. Grrrr…. New zincs all ’round, chased the threads on one of the cooler zinc mounts and the hull zinc mounts, and ready to go back in the water!

Monday morning the fellows at Markley’s said there should be enough water by afternoon, the wind blew from Saturday all weekend so the tide was exceptionally low. No point in scraping all that expensive paint off as soon as it goes in the water! Re-launch was uneventful, and despite the wind still howling, the captain made the short trip across the creek, and picking up crew at the fuel dock, slipped Maerin back into her berth.
More chores to come, the buffing and waxing will require two or three days to complete, and presently will be delayed until the rain quits!

There are some other projects in the works for the next few weeks, among which will be re-work of the upper helm console and addition of a display for the nav computer and relocation of the Raymarine electronics on that console. With our plans for this summer’s cruising, we will likely be spending more time on the flybridge so a chartplotting display becomes more important. Another addition is a rear view CCTV camera that will enable a reversed rear view video to be displayed as a window in the computer nav monitor. We had several instances of faster boats overtaking us by surprise while cruising the ICW, so a rear view camera will be a big help in keeping on top of traffic coming from astern. Oh boy, more cable pulling!! Varnish work, some minor gel coat repairs and some re-stocking on parts will be on the list. It’s much easier to pull things together over a few weeks when we have access to local knowledge, a vehicle, and a shipping destination!
More later!