Ahoy there!

Many people have asked, well some people have asked, ok so my uncle has asked. What did we manage to do that took two weeks in Deltaville?

 

Well I thought I would try to answer that question but firstly I need to explain about 'Cruisers Time'.

I have come to realise that there are three types of time. Working time, Pleasure time and lastly Cruisers time. The first, working time is the most flexible. If you love your job or are working to a deadline, it positively trots along. On the other hand if you don't enjoy your work or have a really hot date that evening, well it can then appear to go very slowly indeed. In fact I know one individual who would actually swear that it stopped if he did not watch the clock very closely. I am not sure this is possible as when it is going so slowly all you have to do is watch the clock and I am sure that I would have noticed it actually stopping. Still that is what this fellow says and I would not doubt him.

The second, Pleasure time is much easier to understand. It has one speed only and that is always 'too short'.

Lastly Cruisers time, a most complicated beast. Minutes can last for days and yet days can disappear entirely. Let me try and explain if I can. When it's black as the devil out and screaming with ice cold needle rain to say that you are soaked through doesn't even get close. Your hands are shrivelled by constant wet and for that matter so are your feet, your arms and your legs and you are on a boat that seems so insignificant against the elements that seem to be vying to outdo each other. Then the moment can last for an hour, but then you have the Deltaville situation where with the aid of good weather, new friends and old to get together with and just a little bit of work to do and nowhere to be until December, two weeks!  

Was it really two weeks? But I think I have got a little away from the original subject of what we did in two weeks at Deltaville.

The main point of having the boat hauled out was to redo the antifouling and replace the cutlass bearing. For the non sailors I will explain the antifouling is paint that is put on the hull of the boat to stop slime, barnacles and weed taking up residence and like any painting the fun part is choosing the colour. The not so enjoyable part is the preparation. This involves scraping the hull to remove any barnacles, this of course is done by hand. The more observant reader will be asking why we didn't do  this 6 months ago when the old paint was working and there were no barnacles. This is another example of Cruisers time, as I am sure it was fine when I checked it out only last week or was it last month? Anyway when this has been done 3 coats of ablative paint is applied at $150 a coat.

Ablative means that it slowly washes off, the manufactures claim that this is so that there is always fresh antifouling to keep the slime at bay. Myself I have always thought it's their idea of a joke and the real reason is to try and frighten you into painting your hull before it is strictly necessary. This of course fails as most sailors are made of stronger stuff and laugh at manufacturers who give them conservative recoating dates, and that's why most boats, when hauled, need a forest of barnacles scraped off.

 

The Cutlass Bearing

 

This is not a bearing at all but a bush. I of course mean bush in the engineering sense not the horticultural. This is placed to support the prop shaft (and stop it flapping about) as close as possible to the propeller, the other end being held in place by the engine/gearbox. When it wears the shaft rattles, when it wears more it bangs up and down and when it is totally worn out - well nobody actually knows what   that sound   is like as by then the noise is so unbearable you are convinced that some major damage is being done and you will haul your boat out. While I was doing the cutlass bearing I took the opportunity to replace the stuffing in the stuffing box. The stuffing box is a clever little thing as it stops the water from coming into the boat while allowing the prop shaft to pass through the hull. Changing the packing or stuffing is best done with the boat out of the water as when you remove the old stuffing water will come in at an astonishing rate and could quite ruin your afternoon. This is one of those occasions where cruiser time forgets what it should be doing and behaves like working time with time going really slowly as you desperately tear cupboards and lockers apart vainly looking for the new packing rings you could have sworn you bought last time you went to West Marine.

 

Anyway I know that this in no way explains how we managed to spend two weeks on jobs that in a normal working time frame should take 3 days but there it is.

 

Warm regards

Sharon & Andrew 

PS. I hope you like the pictures. They are there for no other reason than my uncle has been badgering me for them

PPS.We have added a green boot stripe because we think it looks nice and the previous antifouling was too high and all wibbly wobbly