The Countdown Is On!

Preparing for Hauling Out

With less than a week until we haul out, the countdown is on to get Ruby Rose ready for the next 7 months (7 months!?) on the hard. There’s been a huge number of jobs put in to the ‘Oh, we’ll do that at the end of the season’ pile and now here we are: working like mad to get everything completed!

This may actually be of interest to some readers, so as boring as it is, I won’t skip over exactly what we’ve been doing. After all, we’ve never gone through this process before, and we didn’t really know how long we would need or even what we actually needed to do. So, our jobs list looks something like this:

• Sand and treat toerail
• Clean and treat all outside teak (thankfully we only have teak in the cockpit!)
• Sand and varnish companion way steps, as well as various areas inside- there’s a LOT of scratches and dinks (is ‘dink’ a word? Apparently not… well, you know what I mean).
• Clean…. EVERYTHING. Including, but not limited to, all lockers, under the floor panels, every single tiny corner- of which there are many- where dust and dirt gathers and cakes together, under the floor panels of the heads, everywhere we keep food… basically everywhere. Needless to say, the galley and heads are due for the clean of the century. They are going to literally sparkle.
• Oh, take down, repair and clean the sails. That’s important, right?
• Take down and clean bimini and sprayhood.
• Take down basically everything that’s attached to the transom: wind generator (we’re just taking off the turbine), danbuoy, drogue, horseshoe lifebuoy, MOB unit… all that stuff that we clutter the transom with and hope we’ll never need! The rudder and vane for the hydrovane and the Watt and Sea hydrogenerator have also come off, as have the solar panels.
• Replace a sacrificial nylon washer on the gooseneck. (One of those rare jobs that we think is going to be long and difficult, and turns out to take about 5 minutes. Win!)
• Sort through all food stores and throw basically everything out that isn’t canned, tinned or unopened. Anything we’re keeping goes into zip locked sandwich bags.
• Repair ensign and Aussie courtesy flag. These guys have seen a lot of action and are not ageing well…
• Polishing all the stainless steel. That was my job. And I’ve just remembered that it’s not even finished, because I’m waiting for everything to come off the transom before completing it. Good times.
• Launder basically everything on the boat that can physically be laundered, including pillows, duvets (not that they’ve actually been used at any point over the past 6 months), towels, linen, cushion covers, mattress protectors, etc. Then, everything goes into vacuum packed bags that, as it turns out, leak air.
• Pack. I’ve actually packed already. Normally I leave packing until the day before I go- at the earliest. I have been known to throw a few things into a bag just before heading to their airport. I remember when I was 19 and I went on a student exchange to the UK for 3 months. It was my very first overseas trip, I was going all by myself and did not know a single soul. I packed and re-packed about a thousand times in the weeks leading up to my flight. Oh, how times have changed… except for this one time, where, as I said, I’ve already packed. I must be really looking forward to a change of scenery!
• Flush the outboard through.
• Cleaning and greasing all blocks, steering and other moving parts.
• Gelcoat repairs on the hull.
• Deflate and stow the dinghy.
• Service the engine.

Okay, enough. That will do. We still have another 10 days until we fly out and so some of the jobs on this list haven’t been done yet, for obvious reasons, but most of them have been. I’ve probably left off a lot of small jobs that have also been completed. It’s not been particularly fun doing this work in the constant humidity, so we’ve tended to work for a couple of hours in the morning, then have a slightly less productive afternoon. Our goal is to get the boat back to looking like new, in pristine condition, ready for another bashing next season!

 

It’s Not All Work!

To reward ourselves after a day of hard yakka we head down to the beach every afternoon. It’s our favourite time of day: not only are we nice and cool in the water, but it marks the end of that day’s work, and we can now relax and look forward to an evening onboard with a home cooked meal and a few episodes of Homeland. Just started Season 5 and can I just say it’s not quite living up to Season 4 yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed it gets better. Also? Saul, stop being a dick; Quinn, what the hell is wrong with you this season; and Carrie- we get it, you crazy and not in a good way, but is there really any need to go off your meds so often? Ps, dump the German guy, he’s boring me now.

 

Until next time!