Mahdee is momentarily on the hard at the Ladd’s Marina in Stockton, CA. She’s getting all spiffed up with a 4 year touch up to her 10 year bottom paint…fairing of the hull above the waterline (port side) and new topside paint (all around) …replacement of the failing boot stripe paint (the primary reason for the haul out)…two additional cockpit drains… new prop shaft packing….and a half dozen other little things.

We do all our own work, as many friends know. We still wholeheartedly agree with the Lin and Larry Pardey saying of “If you can’t repair it, maybe it shouldn’t be on board.” Right before the haul out David climbed the mast, yet again, to remove the Airmar weather station so we may send it in for testing and repair. I’m beginning to wonder if that thing should be onboard. It works…sort of…but the gyro, compass, humidity, and GPS all don’t work. So–what does work? The wind speed, temperature, and barometer do work. We purchased the unit on Ebay as new old stock from a marine electronics shop in Florida. It has never worked entirely as it should but the Airmar folks have been surprisingly chipper about trying to fix it properly. I do wish we’d just purchased a new one from a regular dealer. The new ones don’t have a humidity sensor and I really wanted that feature…it has never worked though. I suppose there’s a reason why the new ones don’t have that feature, eh?

The boatyard here is an enjoyable experience. The employees are friendly, the owners are kind and caring people, the other DIY boats in the yard are owned by an interesting mix of characters, including other traveling boaters, as well. The boatyard is part of a small marina. The prices of the boatyard and marina are reasonable and there is good access to shopping close by.

We met up with a cruising boat here, SV Ballena, owned by Randy and Gina. We saw Randy and Gina a few weeks ago when we were in the Georgiana Slough. David and I were floating downstream in a three boat dingy raft-up with four other folks when Randy and Gina came along in Ballena. Randy anchored for a bit just down stream of where we were…while Gina collected some of the plentiful fall rose hips hanging down over the water in that area. We called out “hi” and wondered if we would cross paths again somewhere. So it was really fun to cross paths again so quickly here at Ladd’s just now. We were able to officially “meet” them and hear a lot about their four years of cruising–mostly in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez–as well as their Delta plans. They came up here from Mexico with the intent of spending a year, two, or more exploring the California Delta. As they left the marina yesterday, we made plans to see them again in a nearby anchorage after we re-launch Mahdee in a few days. Neither Mahdee nor Ballena have been to the particular anchorage, so it will be a good “exploration” for both.

Here are some pics of our present boatyard, projects, and Beryl’s antics while here.

David had a bird’s eye view from the top of the mast when he removed the Airmar weather station. Note all the floating water hyacinth in the working docks!

The boot stripe is now sanded off, the bronze parts all primed with the yellow Proline Strontium Chromate primer, and all the bare wood spots on the keel primed with orange/red lead paint.

The trailing edge of the rudder, around a wood bung, bleeds a bit of boat-soup (linseed oil, Stockholm tar, turpentine) that we used to lubricate the bronze drifts as they were driven into the oak as we built the rudder. These hold the oak in the rudder together nicely but the boat soup is getting squeezed out slowly as the oak swelled up after the boat’s launch in April 2009.

Our last haul out was in June 2010 and in general, the bottom paint (applied in March 2009 pre-launch and touched up in 2010) is in very good shape but it won’t stay on the bronze, the old oak keel seemed to pop paint off here-and-there and the new purpleheart countertimber is located close enough to the prop that the prop-wash seems to eventually take the paint off the countertimber.

As we work below and on ladders all day, Beryl sits above us on deck supervising and whining that we’re not giving her sufficient attention.

We’ve gotten out our old blue tarps to cover the boat against the dew or rain. She loves to play in the tarps and our biggest worry is that she’ll fall overboard while playing in a scrunched up tarp on deck.

It has been very windy for two days. The days have been lovely but with too much wind and too cold to paint. David gout the 1.5″ bronze check valves and thru hulls that have been stashed away under the berth. Now is time to install the additional 1.5″ cockpit drains from the cockpit seats to the transom. She has four 1.5″ cockpit drains in the cockpit sole already. Mahdee’s huge cockpit needs these drains to meet the ORC guidance for offshore (racing) yacht cockpit draining times of 3 minutes or less.

I’m hoping for less wind tomorrow since we’ve had three days of strong winds so far that have precluded painting on those days. The FLS transducers can be painted tomorrow even if it is windy and I can start the interior clean-up of the boat in preparation for re-launch. We have two weeks worth of laundry to do since we’re not hooked up to a shore drain or water I can’t use my washer but will have to use the marina facilities instead.