They started sanding the Coppercoat ready to refresh it:
A really horrid job in what was nice warm weather.
The existing coating is nearly 10 years old and we decided to have it refreshed now rather than wait another year or so until it is fully spent and we become an unwitting barnacle farm. We wanted to cram as many maintenance / improvement things into our out of the water time as possible this autumn!
Nearby was a lovely 100+ year old Dutch barge:
which the owners have stripped back to bare metal underneath and recoated. Having seen Justin and his mates after a day doing this, we will NEVER complain about polishing GRP again. Well, perhaps "never" is too restrictive. Charlotte and Justin were great neighbours and most helpful during our time living up in the air. They run the local Oyster farms - see Guernsey Oysters website and work incredibly hard!
Now, the main reason for the out of the water time was to renew the shaft which we know is wearing and has some crevice corrosion too. When the boat was built the factory used chocolate rather than Aquamet 22 hence we need to replace it. The idea is to also replace the gearbox coupling for a taper version (much prefer those) which is identical to the shaft taper. That way we can "end for end" the shaft if we get wear in the stuffing box / cutless area in future.
As well as boat maintenance, our old laptop decided it needed an update as it hadn't been used for many weeks. This was not encouraging:
and in the bottom corner:
It took "only" 24 hours to complete so we should be happy we suppose. Thanks Microsoft, thanks so much.
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Thanks for your ideas / cheek / corrections / whatever! They should hit the blog shortly after the system checks them to make sure they will not put us or you in jail.....