Post Irene

While we were still in Mt. Airy, we called several times and checked on Escape and the Morehead City area. The storm was a Category II when she hit Morehead. The area was not hit as hard as it could have been and most of the damage was due to flooding. We talked to people whose house was flooded up to the bottom of windows on the first floor in the house. Most of the people that have lived here for a while, have a routine to follow before a hurricane comes. They know to move furniture, tie everything down, and then leave. There was a lot of downed trees and broken branches in yards and along the roads. It will take a while to get up all the debris.

We asked Dwayne from Seaveyor to check on Escape, since his boat was near Escape. He walked over to check on our boat and told us everything was ok. The power was off for a while and didn't come back on until we on the way back down there. He also told us that everything was fine at our marina. We were glad to hear everything was good.

We were anxious to see the boat and make sure everything was ok. The boat came through the storm with flying colors. The only damage we had was the microphone for the VHF radio on the fly bridge got water in it. We had to replace the mic element. We left the boat plugged into shore power but expected the power to go off during the storm. Our very large new batteries should have ran the refrigerator for several weeks without power, but when the power went off the refrigerator didn't  switch to battery backup like it should have. So one of the first things we did was clean out the refrigerator and throw some of the stuff away.

Later we found that when the refrigerator was removed to install a small DC fan to keep the refrigerator cabinet cooler, we accidentally unplugged the DC power cord. For the last month, the refrigerator had been running on AC only and we had not noticed when we left the dock that the refrigerator wasn't running. At least it was a cheap fix.

We decided while the boat was out of the water, to sand and paint the underwater portion of the boat. The paint used on the bottom has a high level of copper in it to prevent barnacles from growing on the bottom.

The next day Carlos from Core Creek Boatyard, started sanding the large areas on the bottom of the boat. He suited up with a white plastic suit with a hood, goggles,and respirator. He used a sander that had a vacuum attached to it so the toxic paint on the bottom of the boat would be contained. Carlos worked about 2.5 hours.We worked from 7:00 am until dark on the nooks and crannies. Shay used sandpaper, screwdriver, a dental pick, a drill and I'm not sure what else. But he got it really clean. We had just had a diver clean the bottom of the boat the week before we were hauled out and we were very disappointed in how the bottom of the boat looked. You can tell by the pictures, that the bottom still looked dirty. Maybe we are expecting too much.


Cleaning the rudder so they can get painted.


Carlos started painting the area he had cleaned and we kept cleaning the rest of the boat. Carlos started about 8:30 am, took an hour for lunch, and stopped by 4:00 pm each day. We worked from 6:30 or 7:00 am until the mosquitoes ran us in. We don't know why, but after the hurricane the mosquitoes were awful. They started about dusk every night, it didn't matter if it was calm or windy, they were out and hungry.
 

 

                                                  Painting inside a thru-hull fitting.



We were outside the boat talking to Chris and Sasha Smith from "Tribe" and we had to go inside the boat the mosquitoes were so bad. But that didn't stop them, cause we had left the doors open on the boat and they were inside too.



Painting the inside of the sea chest.



We enjoyed meeting Chris and Sasha and look forward to meeting their kids. They are from South Africa and have already had several adventures. They have already sailed on a previous boat and been on a safari, so they have lots of stories to tell. They have been living on their boat in the yard since there was snow on the ground. They were getting ready to put their boat in the water when Irene came thru. They have decided to stay out until after November 15 to miss the hurricanes. They still have stuff to do to their boat. I think everyone that has a boat has stuff to do. The thing is some people don't get the stuff done or they pay someone else to do it. We can't afford to do that so we just keep on working.

We painted everything on the boat at least twice, somethings three, and some as many as 6 or eight times. We had the paint and were going to try and cover the places that got the most wear as many times as we could.

Shay cleaned and sanded the props until they looked like new and were so shiny. Shay and Ken from Rocking B painted the props with Prop Speed and they look like gold. Prop Speed costs about $7500.00 a gallon, luckily we only needed a couple of ounces. The props are so slick that masking tape won't stick to them.

There was another hurricane coming, Katia, so rather than going back into the water and possibly getting hauled again, we decided to compound and wax the boat. Shay worked on compounding everything from the deck down. Now this may not sound like a big job, but remember how big I said the boat was? Some of the boat he could do standing on the ground, but most of it was done from a ladder and some of it was done from the top of a ladder. Its not easy to stand on top of a ladder and hold on to the anchor with one hand and hold a 7 pound buffer with the other for hours at a time. Shay was exhausted. He said even his hands hurt.

After he finished that, he put on 2 coats of Rejex, a polymer to seal the fiberglass.





 After that he cleaned the rub rail metal to get the rust off. That was the only easy thing he did. The stuff he used was great, just wipe it on and wipe off the rust.

 

Before



After



  

 

   

     

All finished

Well, we finally did all the out of water stuff we had planned and the tropics looked clear with no waves or depressions, and we missed the water, so we decided to go back to the marina. We had a lunchtime pickup, cleaned the places we couldn't get to before and put several thick coats of paint on them and hung there for a couple of hours to let them dry some. They came and put us in the water and we took off for the marina.
 



  

Backing away from the travel lift

 

 





I drove all the way back to the channel coming into the marina. I think I did good. Shay wanted to do several engine room checks so that worked out ok for both of us.

Ken and Margaret from Rocking B met us at our dock and helped undo the front lines we had tie wrapped and then we got settled back into the rhythm of the water.