The boat's spa time was coming to a close...the bottom had been sandblasted and faired, the waterline was raised, and the paint was on! Last weekend the boatyard splashed her, we showed up after hours to swap out the house bank batteries (HEAVY!), and before they opened the next day the delivery crew (everyone but Jo) cleared the slings and was underway! The boat was soooo dirty from a winter on the hard where there are a ton of trees and birds, but we decided to just wait until she was in the new slip to address it.
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| They splashed her and left her at the slings--we can only come/go at this yard at high tide! |
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| Cockpit dinner at sunset with my favorite peeps. Only being at anchor would have made it better! |
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| Yuck, yuck, YUCK! I can't wait to clean her! |
The crew arrived at NAVSTA Norfolk just as the predicted increase in wind started. We got tied up, met a few neighbors, and set to work getting tanks filled and systems aligned. JOY! It was so nice to be in a slip with water and power and to see her floating again instead of in stands. We weren't going to stay long so we just did some tidying topsides and would plan to return later in the week for a deeper clean. But then...
HEARTACHE. As I was picking up topsides I saw it. Why, oh why, didn't I see it before we left the boatyard??? There was no mistaking--we have a crack in the mast. Again. Yes, again. A class issue on this boat is small drainholes in the base of the deck-stepped mast, which can cause serious problems during a freeze/thaw cycles. This happened to us before over a decade ago (
2012 mast crack) and when we repaired it we also enlarged those drain holes. We have sailed and lived in cold areas for half of our time since then without incident. But this one winter on the hard in southern Virginia seems to have been too much and now we have a nearly identical crack on the other side. So, yay, the old repair held! I swear this is the boat telling us how pissed she was about being left on the hard.
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| Our new crack. We will drill holes at the ends of it until we can get the mast taken down. |
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| The inner sleeve and weld on the original crack have held up great over the years! |
What now? The good news is that this time we aren't living on the boat like we were during the first crack so we have more flexibility. We will clean the boat up, look at our options, research yards that can do this job well, and plan another haul out period. Ideal? No. But we honestly have a lot going on this summer with the kids/house and spending a ton of time on the boat was a bit of a stretch anyway. We will fix it when we can and we will go from there. And who knows? Maybe in the next haul out I'll get to do some more hull work that is on my long-range plan!
~Jo, Country Domestic Engineer who is hopelessly in love with a temperamental boat
