The "Back in the Boatyard" Blues

Waking up in the hotel room in Papeete and taking a nice hot shower was such a treat, but we knew what hell we had awaiting us for the next two weeks at “the boatyard.”  Usually we’re anxious to leave a hotel room, but not this time.

We somehow managed to stuff, and I do mean stuff, all our 350 lbs.+ of luggage in a tiny Renault rental car.  With all the weight in the car I could barely make it out of the steep hotel access road using 1st gear and after getting a run at it.

After a leisurely one-hour drive down the west side of the island we arrived at the boatyard and carefully carried all that luggage up a rickety ladder propped against the stern of the boat. We had taken great precautions to protect the boat during our absence, but we could immediately see the mold on the leather cushions and other surfaces. Well, we knew it wouldn’t be easy. We just left everything out in the cockpit, got out the vinegar/water/soap spray bottle and started cleaning everything. After about three hours we had the boat aired out and somewhat inhabitable. Luckily we had put our sheets, pillows, and other soft goods in vacuum pack bags and they seemed OK.

Meryl was in heaven finally being able to buy fresh fruit and vegetables at a well stocked super market.

Just down the road from Taravao is the world famous Teahupoo surf break. This is actually a photo mural of the wave that's at the McDonald's drive-in in Taravao. Hey, you borrow what you have to borrow.

We next took a quick trip down to Carrefour to get groceries and bags of ice cubes so we could use our fridge again (for some reason they don’t sell block ice in Tahiti). Slowly we got things put back and collapsed in bed after a very long day. I knew what was coming up and I dreaded it so going to sleep quickly seemed like the best solution.

Every three or four days Meryl and I would drive about five miles down the road to a roadside faucet that the locals insured was drinkable water. The water in the yard was muddy brown on a good day. 

I can't say Meryl throughly enjoyed this job, but she did good work in cleaning then taping the 88 feet of waterline so we could begin painting the bottom.

We first had the boatyard guys erect a walkway about six feet high around the port side of the boat so we could wash, polish, and wax the sides of the hull. I went in a lower compartment to get my favorite Makita Polisher — that was double wrapped in ZipLoc bags — only to find the bags totally full of water. I dried it out as best I could and prayed when I plugged it in, but nothing. I then disassembled the tool only to find all the electrical circuits covered with rust. To say I was upset is an understatement. For four years that compartment has been bone dry, where the water came from is a mystery to me. Back in the car I drive about three miles south to Taravao where there is a great Ace Hardware full of Makita tools. They had the exact same polisher, but at 3x the price and in 220 volts, which I can’t use once we’re back in the States. But with no choice I plunked down the credit card and walked out the door. Naturally the treads on the spindle were different so some of my polishing bonnets wouldn’t fit, but I somewhat expected that.

The French owner of the boat behind us kindly took this iPhone photo of the happy crew of Flying Cloud working away. Standing on that scaffolding was like walking on a slack line.

Over the next few days we got the boat washed, polished and waxed. I have a favorite wax, Collinite Fleet Wax, but TSA confiscated it out of my luggage last time we flew, so I had to use a not as good substitute. Meryl and I have gotten fairly good at waxing the boat (one yard even offered us a job waxing boats) and the hull is now shiny and looking factory fresh. The next job was not so much fun.

Great shot of me after sanding the bottom of the boat. One wag suggested I join "Blue Man Group." Considering how toxic this paint is I probably won't have to worry about shaving my face for the next year.

Suiting up in my OSHA-approved white bunny suit, with respirator and hat on, I cranked up my Honda genset to provide the 110v my power tools needed, and started at the rear of the boat with a brand new DeWalt orbital sander that I had bought in the states. If you did this job at home you’ve have to have a tarp under the boat to catch all of the old toxic bottom paint and an approved vacuum cleaner hooked up to the sander to catch the dust. But then again, we’re not in the US. 

Fortunately we use an ablative-type of bottom paint that literally wears itself off the boat a little bit every day, so by the time haul out comes (once a year) there’s not much paint on the boat. You really just rough up the surface to accept the new paint. It’s a dirty, ugly job, and when doing it in a tropical environment expect to loose about 3 lbs. of body weight just by sweating inside the bunny suit. Meryl helped by hand sanding the water line and after a long day we had most of the job done.

The next project was to fix some dings I got on the bottom of the keel and rudder when I got two feet on the wrong side of a channel marker (an old rotten timber) in the Los Rosario islands off the coast of Columbia. After sanding the area I mixed up a buttery paste of epoxy and micro-ballons (if you like frosting cakes you’ll love this job) and applied a smooth a paste over all the scratches. Once it hardens you sand it down and do it again, usually by the second coat you’ve got most of the scratches covered. Since the bottom of the keel was partially covered by the support blocks we’d have to do the missed parts later. It looks ugly once all the patches are sanded down, but once the bottom paint goes on you’ll never find them.

A little red paint, then a little black paint. They actually recommend you use two colors when you paint the bottom, that way when you start seeing the red color showing through you know it's time for new bottom paint.

Speaking of bottom paint, we searched all over Tahiti for a special bottom paint called Ameron ABC3. It’s what the US Navy puts on its destroyers and has proven to be a very effective paint in tropical waters. No store in Papeete had any, but we’d heard a rumor that our very own Ace Hardware in Taravao might have some so we jumped in the car and drove down.  The good news was they had some. The bad news was they sold the last two cans of blue, our usual color, the day before. We settled for what they had left on the shelf, two cans of red and two cans of black. This bottom paint sells for about $200/gal. so you want to be very careful with it.

Now here’s the part where they just about hauled me off to the mental institution. We’re on a tight schedule to go back into the water at the boat yard. That means we’ve got to complete the bottom paint and finish all our other jobs. The day before we’re ready to paint we make one last run to ACE to get some paint rollers, trays, etc. and one more can of black bottom paint that had just come in. We kept all the paint on the floor of the back seat of our rental car. When we got back to the yard, we parked the car and I opened the back door and out flies a can of black bottom paint. In my youth I could have done the diving fly ball catch, but no longer. It hit the ground, the lid sprang off and $200 of very rare and valuable paint began a circular migration to the center of the earth. That was truly the last can of paint in all of Tahiti (you can’t mix brands of bottom paint, it’s tough enough to get the same brand to stick over the top of itself). I saved about a quart that still hadn’t poured out, but not knowing exactly how much paint we’d need (and needing the black to cover the red first coats) I was in a super crabby mood for the rest of the day. As Meryl mentioned, what if it had opened inside the car? The rental car company examined the car with a microscope before they released it to us so I can’t imagine how that scenario would have gone. 

These are the things that happen cruising that seriously test your mental stability and ability to get out of bed the next day.  We got a coat of red paint on without any drama the next day and knew we were going to be super close on the amount of black needed to finish the job. Luckily we ended up with about one quart left over after the entire job was done. The good news is we did a much better job than the typical yard workers would do (we’d had the yard do this job for the last four years, but in Tahiti labor is just too expensive). We breathed a huge sigh of relief, high-fived each other, and promised to get really drunk at some point just to forget the whole experience.

I found a wonderful Makita high speed die grinder on Amazon that spins at some ungodly RPM. With a good brass cup brush you can clean the underwater metal on the boat fairly quickly. You just need to make sure you don't grind your thumb off (don't ask me how I know this). 

The world's most expensive paint (even more than bottom paint) is PropSpeed. It does a great job of protecting the prop and shaft from underwater growth for exactly one year. In this photo you can see the new protective zincs on the prop, prop shaft, and underbody of the boat.

The last job was to coat the prop shaft and prop with a special PropSpeed paint that is hard to find and normally costs $200. They only had it in a larger size in Tahiti so we got to spend $400 (hopefully we can use the rest next year). It’s a very tricky job, but since we’d done it last year we’d gained some experience and actually did a fairly good job. You have to have the shaft and prop super clean right before you apply the PropSpeed, and I enlisted my secret tool (a Makita electric die grinder that spins at some incredible RPMs). I put a brass wire cup brush on (also impossible to find in Tahiti) and got the shaft and prop looking like a trophy on championship day. Coating the shaft/prop with PropSpeed just about guarantees you a year of no growth on the prop. I can actually feel the difference when I’m motoring the boat.

The new 40-ton hydraulic trailer does a good job of adjusting itself to the shape of the hull.

Meryl always has great trepidation whenever the boat is being moved, perhaps rightly so.

Meryl and Yvan, the yard manager. Yvan did an excellent job making sure everything went smoothly in the yard. Also, having someone who spoke English helped us in a hundred ways when we were tying to order parts, etc.

The hydraulic trailer is not self propelled, rather they use the red tractor to very slowly move the boat from location to location. Then they anchor the tractor with a heavy chain and slowly let gravity roll the trailer into the water.

After three weeks of no toilets, no showers, and no refrigeration on the boat we were extremely happy to see Flying Cloud gently lowered into the waters of Port Phaeton. We actually got to sit out in the cockpit that night sipping a drink and enjoying the sunset without becoming hors d’oeuvres for the local mosquito population.  Never have I been so glad to have the boat back in the water.

To celebrate we walked the mile down to the Carrefour with our little baggie of chocolate chips and bought the world's most expensive Haagen-Dazs ice cream. And it tasted ever so good.

I loved watching the local Tahitian kids at their sailing school. It's serious training with the students learning boat rigging, navigation, safety, tactics, and general seamanship. One day it was blowing a steady 20 knots and they still went out sailing. This little girl always had the proper Gallic pout on her face, and always was in the lead over all the boys.

The next day we were blessed by the local Tahitian kids, who having attended a two-week long sailing school, all sailed past us in their Optimus racing dinghies and waved. The only reply I knew was from watching the Tour de France bicycle race so I yelled “Allez, allez.”

They probably thought I was a dork.