The Haulout

On Friday. We moved the boat up to Napa Valley Marina for haulout. I took the boat up alone and Joan drove the car.

This boatyard is on the Napa river up above San Pablo Pay near Napa, Ca. The trip was uneventful, and I was tied at there dock by about 1 pm. Mike, the yard supe, looked the boat over and had me move it around to the hauling dock. They used a hydraulic trailer to do the haulout. The trailer has stands which can be raised and lowered, so they roll the trailer down the ramp and float the boat onto it. When it is all lined up, they raise the stands on the trailer to lift the boat above the level of the ground below the trailer and use a tractor to pull it out, and into the yard.

They then pressure wash all the cooties off the bottom and move it to a spot in the yard where it is set up on blocks and stands. I am quite pleased with how fair and clean the bottom is. We have spent a great deal of time on other boats, just trying to smooth the bottom out and get all the flakey paint off, not so much this time.

The next morning, we set to work. Joan removes the vinyl lettering from the hulls with a heat gun, and I remove the sails, tramps and remaining winches that we no longer need. We also removed the side curtains from the dodger for the first time. The top is probably above the dirt line, so it stays and I fashion an awning for a little shade. It gets up around 90 in the afternoon and some shade will be appreciated. We will now try to sand the decks and hulls to remove any loose paint and fill any gaps so that the new paint will stay put. Planning to have the mast pulled off in a few days so we can clean it up and run some wires and such.

Brutally hot for the last 2 days, 96 each day, they say it is dry, but the nws sez its 80% humidity and we are wilting in it. More of the paint is coming off the sides than we had wanted, but no one who has done this before should be too surprised. Tried a test patch of some new paint, but it failed in oh so many ways, didn't end up shiney, didn't cover in 1 coat, and wasn't orange, too bold.

Time to figure something else out.