ep55 - Boat maintenance - Jolly Harbour, Antigua – Hallberg-Rassy 54 Cloudy Bay - Dec 2018

Hauled out primarily to remove antifoul that was too expensive to do in USA. Also change fridge keel cooling system from Isotherm to Frigoboat; removed varnish and much much more.

s/v Cloudy Bay (Hallberg-Rassy 54) is out the water again, to complete the works on the hull that could not be done in Herrington, MD, USA. These were the tasks:
– Chemically stripped the antifoul back to the original barrier coat, applied InterProtect and antifoul. Managed to get back to the original waterline mark. Stripping by soda blast in the USA was too expensive plus the outside temperatures for re-painting were too low.
– Install 3 new Frigoboat keel coolers, better suited to warm waters than our current Isotherm ones. Brazing of the pipes was needed. No one in the USA would do us that service.
– Strip the Coelan “varnish” off the gunwale following the damage by the collision in New England. The intention was to re-varnish, but the constant random rain showers put us off. And debated long and hard whether to re-varnish in consideration of the necessary maintenance in these climates. Sadly, we ended up leaving it bare teak, …. for now.
– Tried to have the vang serviced again, but he riggers did not have the parts. So we instead renewed the hydraulic oil in the entire system hoping that would fix the minor oil leak.
– Installed a new cockpit light with a LED strip in the underside of the boom.
– Put in new teak plugs to the coach roof handrails.
– …plus a few other little bit and pieces.
All with the usual amount of frustrations, and attention to detail, like we do! 11-23 Dec 2018