Bock Marine (Tuesday 10/16/2012 thru Friday 10/19/2012)

I am combining 4 days because bugger-all is happening. Deidre and I are really getting a bit fed up with the yard. Seems very unlikely that we will get out of here this week. Progress is very slow and communication virtually non existent.

New bottom treatment

The bottom job is now complete and looks good. However I was unimpressed that I had to ask the crew to remove the thru-hull covers and clean inside the piping. Seems to me that this is one of the most basic components of a haul-out and bottom job. Turns out the majority of the 6 thru hulls were choked with growth and needed to be dealt with. But it is all done now and looks nice.

Thru hull strainers removed, cleaned & painted

Since I have started to complain I will continue in the same vien. After the underside part of the hull had been sanded the crew "washed" the dust of the painted side of the boat. They used a concoction that appeared quite potent. Next morning I observed that the paint was badly stained with rust streaks. Seemed like their boat wash had reacted with stainless fittings on the side of the boat (rub rains, fender rails, window frames, haws-holes etc) and the resulting chemical reactions had dribbled down our beautiful paint job leaving brown streaks. I tried to wash off the stains with boat wash - no effect. I tried a rust stain remover - no result. I tried a 3M polish - no result.The lady in the boat next door suggested another product and that worked with only about 80% effectiveness. So I lodged an official complaint and this AM a crew was assigned to polishing the stains off with some sort of "grinding compound". This seems to be working (by grinding off half the paint, no doubt.)

The good news is that the paint man has turned up today and has started patching some of my parking scrapes. There are really only a couple, but when one bounces 35 ton of boat off an immovable bulkhead, something has to give, and the paint cracked in a couple of places on the rub rail. He is also the muffler repair man, and he just promised me he would work on that over the weekend. We need the muffler to get back into the water - the other repairs can be done in the water.

More good news. The extended davit crane arrived and was re-installed this afternoon. I will re-install the motor and cable tomorrow. This will make it much easier for us the deploy the dinghy. Meanwhile, one of the valves on the dinghy has completely failed and the side tubes have totally deflated. A replacement has been ordered, to arrive Tuesday. And on it goes!

There are a dozen or so couples living on their boats as they are being worked on. This causes several inconveniences (such as the sinks and shower drain out onto the dirt) but the biggest is that you have to climb a ladder to get on and off the boat. This looked quite dangerous to Deidre and I so we requested the addition of a hand rail to our ladder and we tied it to the swim platform so it could not slide. Yesterday we were started to see an ambulance arrive and dismayed when we heard that a lady had fallen off her ladder near the top and had a badly broken arm and banged her head. It was a compound fracture with the bone poking thru the skin. A warning for all.

We went out for Mexican with new friends. They own a boat the same as ours - theirs is hull #58 and ours is #61. They are renovating theirs at another yard in the area.