It was over three years ago that we last hauled Take Two out of the water for maintenance.  At that time, our bottom paint was relatively fresh and we had other priorities.  This time, our paint was four and half years old and our primary motivation for pulling out.  

Hauling out is never easy for us.  I only know of five yards in all of Florida that can handle our 26’ beam.  They’re in Bradenton, St James City, Key Largo, Ft Lauderdale, and Ft Pierce.  So that’s why we’re in Ft Pierce.

Hauling out is further complicated because the boat is our home.  Last time we still had a house.  This time we’d need alternate housing for up to two weeks while the boat was getting worked on, which meant a total disruption of our lives.

It took us two months to make it all happen, but finally Take Two got to take a ride on the TraveLift.

We’re expecting her to be out for two weeks while we work through our project list:

• Strip off 20 years of accumulated paint buildup below the waterline.  We’re having adhesion problems and can’t just keep adding more layers.
• Remove three thru-hulls from back when we had toilets flushing with salt water.  I don’t see us ever going back that direction.  Each is a risk, and they’re in the way.  That will bring our total number of removed thru-hulls to 11.
• Remove the forward-looking sonar transducer.  Maybe the technology will be better someday, but for now I don’t think it’s worth having.
• Replace our unused speed log transducer with a combination depth, speed, and temp unit.  With keels 20 feet apart, seeing depth on both sides of the boat will be really helpful.  It will take some time to get the second depth integrated into the instrument displays, but we won’t have to haul out to do it.
• Have a surveyor look over the boat.  Our insurance company requires this every five years.  That anniversary is only six months away and with the bottom paint off, this will be the best opportunity for the surveyor to see the condition of the boat.
• Change the bolts on our backstay chainplates.   Some of the bolts are submerged, so we need to do this with the boat out of the water.
• Change the cutless bearings and zincs on the running gear, and grease the propellers.  That’s just regular maintenance.
• We also need to decide whether we want to keep the propellers counter-rotating, or change them to rotate the same direction, and whether we want to change the blade pitch.  These changes would be in anticipation of replacing the engines later on.
• Repair the bridgedeck strakes that were damaged when we broke our catwalk.
• Repaint the hulls with antifouling paint.  We’re going with Trinidad SR, a hard paint.  We haven’t been having much luck with ablative paints, and wanted to try something different.  We can always switch back later.

There will probably be a few other things that pop up along the way, but hopefully no big surprises.

In the meantime, Tanya has taken the kids on a little road trip to see friends and family.  I stayed behind to supervise the work and have rented a place nearby.  We figured the best thing for Spideycat was to stay aboard.  Since the boat’s air conditioners can’t run without cooling water, I bought a little window unit and ducted it down a hatch to keep her cool.