They Don't Call It On The Hard For Nothing!

The boat is out of the water on the hard and it's time for the work to begin.  We started by chipping barnacles and oysters from the bottom, sanding the freeboard and the bottom, wiped it down and she was ready for paint.  Sounds so easy doesn't it?   Shew!  It's hard, hot work.

Not too many barnacles.  But there were oysters aplenty on the keel coolers.

There were quite a few oysters on the keel coolers.  This is just 1/2 of them as we had already cleared out a bucket full when I took this picture.

Here's how she looked at the beginning.

I worked on the freeboards.

While Carter worked on the bottom.

Carter and I both had our boat yard fashion on!

Good News!  Carter had 2 qualified opinions on the cutlass bearing and both agreed that it is in good shape and does not need to be replaced at this time.  Carter had already planned to replace the current auto prop with the original 3 bladed prop.  The picture above shows the new prop installed with the auto prop on the ground below.

Cleaning the keel with wire brush.

 There were a few places that needed to be repaired and Carter spent a good bit of time mixing epoxy patch material and trowling it on, then grinding it down, nice and smooth.

We had time to paint the superstructure.

Wow!  She looks real nice to us!

 

Both freeboards, all of the superstructure, and the outsides of the bottom are painted.

We have time to paint the stripes on the freeboard.

We thought this would be a good time for a before and after comparison.

This was when Carter moved the Ketch Du Jour from Matlache to the Oxbow where it stayed for about 2 years.  The 30 year old wooden masts were taken down because of decay. 

During this down time Carter built a solar powered dingy for the late Ellen Peterson at Happehatchee in Estero, Florida and that was when the idea for solar power propulsion was born.

After a two year recovery from the auto accident Carter was ready to get back to work on the boat.  This is when I came in to the picture and this was my first look at the "Hal".  The boats first name was the Halcyon and that is what Carter always called her.

And here is how she looks this morning!

She's ready to go back into the water. 

There is still plenty of work yet to be done but we're done in the yard.