Blood, sweat, bruises but no tears

Yes, it is the annual maintenance weekend, when your home gets hoiked out of the water, dumped onto the land and has her bottom pressure washed to remove the detritus deposited by the sea.

Actually, the boatyard team at Shamrock were great. No hoiking or dumping. The whole process was very carefully and professionally handled.

Our role (after delivering the sick PC to the nice Tech-Bods people) was to provide the unskilled labour. The work list varies little from year to year. In essence:

• Clean up the propellors and rope cutter
• Clean off the wing engine driveshaft and bracket
• Clean up the keel coolers and ground plates etc
• Clean then anti-foul paint the thruster propellers and a few underwater outlets
• Grease the seacocks (for those of you smiling at this, you have a dirty mind. It isn't at all like that)
• Replace all the anodes (or Zincs for our American readers)
• Polish the lower part of the hull topsides
• Soak for several hours in a warm bath / book Osteopath appointments

Luckily, we had the boat Coppercoated when we bought her, so we don't have to face rolling on gallons of paint each year. That would be a job too far.

Here she is, out of the water - see how the travel hoist looks bigger now (bearing in mind the ladder we use to get on board that you can see at the stern is just over 4  metres long :

Previously, we've posted pictures of the sterngear showing a very bright copper coloured hull - ie just after the Coppercoat was applied and before she went back into the water. Well, this is what she looks like now:

Dark green "Copper oxide" colour, with a cleaned up, greased and coated wing prop sporting new anodes too.

Basically we dodged the many rain showers and got everything on the must do list completed by Sunday evening. We even managed to buy a quick beer for Phil Roach from Nordhavn Europe who popped round,  to wet his new baby's head. Poor Jess (mum) missed out as did Rosie who is too young to drink (1 week).

All that is left to do is book the Osteopath and prepare for the relaunch at about 8am tomorrow.