Haul Out and Haul Ass

Retired? Nope. Unemployed? Nope. Boat needs maintenance? Yep.

Here’s the deal. We don’t let people maintain our boat. We do it. Or at least we supervise it. Problem is every year you need to haul the boat and paint the bottom among other things. For us the year came early due to our barnacle disaster in Dominican Republic. Hauling usually is a weeklong affair but we had 4 days to have it done so we could catch our flight back and get to work.

It’s a big deal….

We have hauled boats many times. Cats are different. It takes a massive hoist to lift them and one large enough to handle our 25-foot beam. Bobby’s Megayard has the equipment to do it and they were great. We got the boat out of the water no problem and began the sanding, painting and repairing grind. We “thought” we could just stop by a few times a day while sightseeing and observe the work. As it turned out, each day the work progressed we had to spend more and more time there. The last 2 days we were there all day. For example, they had to remove the props to service the sail drives (the propeller and transmission housing is called a sail drive) To remove the props you have to remove 3 set screws, one inner bolt, one outer bolt, 2 zincs and save every piece so you could put it all back the way they came out. When the mechanics do it they just remove and throw the bolts and screws everywhere. Then when its time to put it back together something is always missing. Our advice is to keep in mind that it’s your boat and you are responsible for every piece of it. Don’t assume that a mechanic will execute his work perfectly or correctly for that matter.

Just an oil Change….

Once, we let a mechanic change our oil in Antigua while we were away from the boat. The oil change got an A+. There certainly was new oil in the engine. He also had spilled oil in the bilge and it got into the bilge pump, there were several odd looking screws in the bilge and he had used some sort of solvent that left white etched spots all over the floor and on the nav station. Because we couldn’t live with the damage, I had to go back to the Hunter factory where they sent me the last two sheets of the European special flooring they had for $1600 bucks. Then I had to get a machine shop to cut it into the patterns we had and replace the damage spots in the floor. I spent over $2000 cleaning up from his oil change.

Not Cool…..

Another time we had an AC repair man help us with our salon air conditioner because it wasn’t cooling very well. We came back a month later and it worked perfectly. I called the mechanic to thank him for a job well done and he said it was easy. He just removed the heating system all together and that solved the problem…WTF? Removed the heater? He said these are the tropics you don’t need it. I told him I was leaving on a trip for the arctic circle the next day and I needed my Goddamn heater. Long story short he couldn’t fix it and I cant have a ramshackle boat so I bought a new air conditioner for the salon at a cost of $1800 plus the complete shipping nightmare of getting it to Tortola. In the end I installed it myself since its mostly plug and play. Again, over $2000 because I wasn’t there to supervise.

Lock it up…..

 When we fly in and out we arrange our service so that we are in town before or after a trip. When we leave we lock the boat and set the alarm. I do leave a key in a lockbox incase I need to give someone access but so far in 9 trips I haven’t had to and when we get back to the boat its always just the way we left it.

Video…..

This video shows our recent Saint Martin haul out and as the title says we were in a hurry……