If it Ain’t Broke…

  

Paint it.

An average cruising boat (at least in the circles we hang out in) has a to-do list that runs into pages. There are those occasional people who somehow put together a cruise-ready boat, and then pay someone else to maintain it. But for the rest of us, life revolves around repairing stuff when it breaks, fixing stuff so it won’t break, or installing new stuff after something breaks. 
In roughly that order.

 There are times though when nothing is actively broken, needing installed, or needing beefing up. When this happens, we move out of survival mode and into beautifying the boat. Actually, most of the time we go read a book, but this is why after living aboard for over a year the boat’s interior still needs painting.

When we first bought this boat six years ago, Evan told me it would take a year (or so) to build the cabin and get Ceilydh cruise ready, and then another few months to get her looking cosmetically good. The only stipulation I made was that I didn’t want to cruise on a half-finished boat. The boat ended up taking five years to get cruise ready and while it was more than half-finished when we finally left, it wasn’t finished, finished.

needs two more coats, then we'll do the white areas and the varnish...

 The parts of this boat that aren’t between 1-4 years old, are 23 years old. And I’m pretty sure the last time the wooden trim saw a lick of paint or varnish was roughly 23 years ago. I don’t know if it’s a man-woman thing, or a blind-not blind thing, but the all that old peeling varnish and battered paint makes me a bit crazy. Evan insists it’s not that noticeable and after all what’s more important to me, two functioning water tanks, or fresh paint. I kind of think it shouldn’t be an either, or situation. I should get to have a pretty boat and clean drinking water…

Although the water tanks are still a work in progress (we had a leak when we recently tested the first tank Ev rebuilt) but painting seems to be a job that is better suited to a hot Baja summer. So before we left La Paz we stocked up on paint, tape, and sand paper. The plan for the summer is that between more pressing repairs, we’ll paint. And varnish. And paint some more.

Today’s task is the galley. Goodbye, ugly, old water-stained wood. Hello, whatever colour the paint guy made us.

The Hard Life

 I realized this morning that the last time I lived on the hard on a boat was when Maia was 13 months old. Back then, going up and down a ladder with a toddler, who wanted to do it, “all by myself”, added a special element of terror to the experience. The time before that, I was seven months pregnant, and that wasn’t much fun either.

It’s still not fun.

Boats aren’t meant to sit up in the air. And no matter how much they might need that annual maintenance (which this time was put off for nearly three years…) the hard life, is, well, hard. Not only are you living life on a bit of a tilt, and going up and down a ladder and across a boat yard every time you need access to things that flush, but boat yards are not clean places—they’re actually quite filthy. And the people who spend time in boat yards are really not the kind of people you want influencing impressionable eight-year olds—there were more Spanish swear words flying around yesterday than I knew existed...

The reason for the swearing was our haul out on the marine railway probably didn’t go as planned. In fact, I’m almost certain the fact that the boat lost steering immediately after picking the crew who were securing us to the rail car caused some concern. I know I yelled.

The problem is Mexican hand signals. I’m not sure if you’re familiar, but they can be confusing. Come here, can look an awful lot like ‘get the hell out of here, death is imminent’. Even the signal to cross the road seems a bit ambivalent, it sort of looks like ‘sure, go, maybe, or not.’

So when we headed into the marine railway, there were several groups of workers who seemed to wave us away, then wave us back, then wave us one way and then the other. Meanwhile as we tried to sort out what we needed to do Evan spun and reversed, and spun the boat some more--all while in a narrow, current filled channel. Finally we realized we needed to pick up some of the boatyard workers before driving into the railway car. The pickup worked okay initially, and then it didn’t. With no warning, our engine went wonky and the boat stopped spinning and reversing on command and the next thing I knew the crew were jumping overboard.

Happily rather than swimming off in fear from our boat with no steering, they had a go at manoeuvring us into the railway car: pushing us in sideways and backward, while swimming. Amazingly the technique worked. And we’re here. And Evan has a small fix to make on the motor.

I know we were supposed to leave the docks a week ago – but in retrospect, the thought that we could move aboard Thursday and cut the dock lines on Saturday was unrealistic. On Saturday we were still buried in boxes and I couldn’t even find my coffee grinder – so we definitely weren’t ready to sail.

We also had a non-skid issue. Evan and I repainted the nasty looking grey decks with some fab paint he found on Craigslist. We assumed because the decks had such a textured nonskid finish that you could coat them in ice and they would still provide traction. So we skipped the step where you add extra non-skid particles to the paint. Ice may have been fine – but the paint wasn’t. When wet, our decks had the potential to be named in a lawsuit claiming a broken hip.

Ev liked the idea of painting in some far away harbour – and simply walking around carefully until we got to it.

I visualized Maia skidding off the deck while crossing the Strait.

A mother’s worry always trumps a father’s laziness.

So one week after our planned departure date, we were woken by our neighbour, who was heading off on a little tour with a few guests (got to admit that we’re starting to worry because 24 hours later, he’s not back yet. Shades of Gilligan’s Island and all that…), got up early and started taping off the deck. And taping. And taping.

Then we sent Maia to her grandparents (because they don’t make respirators in her size) and we started painting. And painting.

Then we went to the pub – because our kid was at her final night with a babysitter!

The decks are nonskid now, though. We checked this morning.

DONE PAINTING!

It feels pretty good to be able to say that. The cabin is now painted (though I will admit a bit of black paint is going onto the windows to hide the caulking but that can come later...

It looks very nice up close. All shiny and white and glossy.

I've also started interior painting. This chart table has just a coat of primer but it's better than all black carbon fiter.