Cutting a hole in the hull and other boat stuff

We hope to be back in the water in about two weeks so it was time to deploy our dock fenders and boat steps. That meant taking a half day off on Friday and making a road trip out of it. We loaded the steps and fenders in the old station wagon and then took a leisurely drive to our marina, The Marina at American Wharf in Norwich. It was a beautiful day, perfect to play around on the dock.

We put the fenders out on the dock and pulled them nice and tight. That's where our boat will rest on for much of the summer.

Then we only had to put the boat stairs exactly where the were last year. Luckily, we marked the dock before we left last fall so it was easy getting the stairs right where Frances can use them comfortably.

Now all we need to see in this picture is our boat tied up right there.

Saturday and Sunday were a blur of fun boat activities. We planned to install a much-needed garboard drain midships and that meant cutting a hole in the hull. Here's what a garboard drain looks like. It's really just a plug in the bottom of the boat that can be opened once on land, to drain out old bilge water, much of which is condensate from our air conditioner.

We measured thrice before we used this 1-inch hole saw to cut the necessary hole.

The plug that came out of the hull was 5/8-inch of solid fiberglass. We like solid!

With the garboard drain installed, we moved on the next annual task: installing the zincs. We have ten and we dutifully scrubbed all the surfaces clean and installed new ones. We don't want our boat eaten away by corrosion, do we?

Then we began the most hated, dirty work on the boat: Painting the bottom or, more correctly, putting on bottom paint wherever the crew last fall blasted it all off with their power washer.

Several years ago, we scraped the bottom down to the Gelcoat and applied a barrier coat of green paint. Each year, over that, we apply a coat of ablative black bottom paint. Wherever the green barrier coat shows through, we need to reapply some back bottom paint and that's what we are doing now.

If you are smart enough to pay someone to climb under your boat and roll on this black paint, we congratulate you. Every year, we say that we will never do this again, but we do. This just might be the last year that we come home with black dots on our face.