The last few things before we go into the water

It has now rained on and off for a week. The boat is cold and since we took the electric heater home several weeks ago, we'll have to just deal with it. With any luck, next weekend the boat will be in the water and we'll be planning our cruise to Norwich where we'll be for the summer.

Our first task for this weekend was to install the zincs. We could probably have gotten away with using the old ones for another season, but why? To save the $72 cost of the zincs? Not worth it for us.

While we were down there, we inspected the shafts, props and struts. Everything looked good so we can cross them off of our list.

Next came the fun job of applying bottom paint anywhere that we saw the barrier coat showing though. The barrier coat is bright blue so it's easy to see where the yard crew blasted through the black bottom paint last fall. Not a lot this year, thankfully.

Applying bottom paint at the water line means that we had to mask that line first and that went fairly easily. Once the bottom paint was dry, we pulled off the tape.

Not very exciting pics, but with launching only days away, it's the best we could do.

The top for our bridge enclosure has become a problem. We usually take that home and clean it just before the boat goes in the water. When we took it down last week, we discovered that it was littered with bird shit. Not the usual splotch or two but lots of birdie BMs from one side of the top to another.

We tried scrubbing with lots of water and a stiff brush and while lots of it came off, the stains remained. Luckily you can only see it from above.

On Sunday, we applied the 303 waterproofing spray that we always use to the top but had to allow drying time so nothing was done on the boat on Sunday. Feels funny to be sitting at the desk writing a blog post this early.

We shot some video in which Frances shows off our stained top. Hope you enjoy it.