Sanitas is back in the boatyard for the most active part of hurricane season, and Capt. Mike and I thought we might have a nice little vacation from the boat. You know, stay in a pleasant apartment, rent a car, maybe explore the island of Grenada, doing hikes to waterfalls and discovering isolated beaches. But no. Instead, we are up to our eyeballs in boat projects. As we walked home yesterday evening, covered in paint residue and mud and completely exhausted, I asked Capt. Mike, “Do you think we got a little bit carried away this time?”

It all started with our normally scheduled annual haul out and inspection of the hull and keel that are usually hidden below the water line. The red anti-foul bottom pain hadn’t held up as well as in previous years – we got a lot of hard and soft growth on the bottom this season, and we’d scraped the red paint all off and down to the blue layers underneath in several spots. Perhaps the Puerto Rican boatyard had applied the anti-foul too far in advance of splashing into the water last fall? And then we looked closely at our lead keel and noticed spots where all of the anti-foul and primer were gone, and we could see the exposed lead. Well, that’s a problem. We’ve got to do something about that.

So we hired the team at the Spice Island Marine boatyard to sand Sanitas’s hull. The goal was to get down to a good layer of primer so that we could reapply lots of layers of anti-foul paint and be really confident in our hull’s condition for the 2021 cruising season. But…between sand blasting and hand sanding, they took off much more than we expected. Primer? Fuggedaboutit. They took the keel down to exposed lead, and sanded the hull right down to the white gelcoat. In fact, we can even see the fiberglass in some spots. Uh oh.

So, now instead of a couple of coats of anti-foul, we have a big project on our hands. We have to finish sanding and prepping all the parts they did poorly. Then we have to epoxy all the spots where fiberglass is showing through. Next, four or five layers of Interprotect 2000e epoxy primer – with very specific temperature and humidity constraints and dry times between coats. THEN we’ll finally get to the point where we can start applying the anti-foul. And all of this primer and anti-foul contains some pretty yucky chemicals and toxins, so we’ll need to apply it wearing respirators and a paper bunny suit. I have to admit, I’ve stopped even asking what all of these jars of epoxy and primer and paint and solvent actually cost!

Oh! And did I mention that since we were having the yard sand the hull down so far, we decided to raise the water line? That means we’ll apply anti-foul a couple of inches higher this time, because I guess I provision too many canned goods and Sanitas always sits lower in the water than planned. And once we raise the water line, we’ll have to repaint the dark blue boot stripe a couple of inches higher as well? And of course we have to find the right color blue to match the other blue trim on Sanitas so she doesn’t look trashy, right?

So if you want us over the next few weeks, you’ll find us in the boat yard. Definitely sweaty, probably covered in paint, most likely hungry or thirsty, and guaranteed grumpy. I hope it’ll all be worth it and Sanitas will be in the best shape of her long life when we’re finished!