February 22-25, 2011... Anhinga Hauls Out

The travel lift team was to be waiting for us between 7 and 8 am on Tuesday morning. We only had 1/2 mile to the boatyard from our spot in the anchorage, but we were nervous and pacing at 6 am. The wind was up and driving Anhinga into a concrete slipway is a white knuckle exercise. John manned the helm, Patti had fenders out and lines ready. Off we went. The yard crew was great, patiently awaiting us as we made an extra circle outside the slipway after coming in too short and getting blown to port the first time around. Finally, we are in, and the slings are wrapped around Anhinga. Up she goes and boy, you would not believe the bottom! Crabs scurrying everywhere, beautiful sponges of every color, algae and other assorted life forms, were making their homes on Anhinga's hull. All this after only 3 months since the last scraping.

By 9am our role was finished, the yard crew went to work, scraping the muck off the bottom, pressure washing the rest, and moving Anhinga into the yard, chocking her up, and readying her for the paint crew. We decided to lose the bottom part of our boot stripe and bring up the line of antifoul paint, figuring that part of our problem had been that the original waterline was now below water. As liveaboards, we keep the fuel and water tanks full, weighing down the boat as previous owners had not. We also opted for a barrier coat, as we changed from ablative paint to a copolymer paint. We were staying with basic black for the antifoul, a slimming color for a beautiful boat!

For the next couple of days, while the paint crew worked, we took full advantage of being on land. We stayed in the Catamaran Hotel next to the boatyard, where we took at least a couple of showers every day, luxuriating in that hot running water. We also had internet access -- it was a real pleasure to just turn on the computer to check email, not to have to bundle up the computers and dinghy to an internet cafe. John did some work on the boat, but Patti did... nothing! We even tried our hand at sailing the sunfish off the hotel beach -- with the wind as strong as it was we took off! A little scary actually.
Friday, Anhinga was done. Up in the slings again and the paint crew made the last finishing touches. Now it was our turn again to pull her out of the slipway. This time, Patti was at the helm as the lift crew walked Anhinga back to the end of the slipway and said good bye. Again, the winds were up, but we were successfully out of the yard and motoring to a place in the anchorage. Of course the winds were 20-25 knots for anchoring -- that's what makes it all so fun! And here we wait for a weather window to leave the harbor for Nonsuch Bay.