Cool Change Travels & Adventures: Waylaid in Ponce Inlet (Daytona Beach) Nov. 28-Dec.4

We have traveled only 45 miles on the ICW in two weeks! We have been on the hard (that means out of the water for the landlubbers among our readers) for the past week at Lighthouse Boat Yard in Ponce Inlet, FL. There were a number of maintenance issues to resolve before we could truly get underway this fall. Two weeks before we started our journey we had a diver scrub the bottom of the boat. This regular monthly cleaning is to remove algae and barnacle accumulation. However our first diver had missed our boat for over two months. The new diver reported that stray electric current in the marina had eaten small holes in our trim tabs and that our bow thruster had lost one shaft and the connected propeller. With this bad news and the fact that we were overdue for new bottom paint - bottom paint erodes as it sloughs off algae and barnacles - we decided to haul the boat from the water for these repairs. Our past week has been occupied with periods of intensive labor and then periods where we waited for marina people to take action.

Coming out!

Rolling along

Do you see where the boat yard got its name? This beautiful red brick
lighthouse overlooks the boatyard. At 175 feet and more than 200 steps to the top
it's the tallest of Florida's lighthouses.

Boat sitting on wood blocks and jack stands

Once the boat was blocked, the marina started pressure washing the entire hull to remove algae and barnacles. Luckily there were very few barnacles on the boat.

The boat was allowed to dry overnight. The next day Wayne began the arduous task of sanding the hull to remove any barnacles and to feather any breaks in the existing bottom paint to hull bond.

View from our boat

Home for barnacles

Attempting to keep off the icky blue green stuff produced by the sanding

Sanding the hull

The six foot ladder has been our access to the boat all week as we continued to live onboard during the maintenance and repair work. We also had to limit our water usage so we wouldn't mess up the paint work. Picture a sink full of three days of dirty dishes.

The blue green stuff is hazardous to your health so we covered up as much as we could!

This is so much Fun!

Primer applied to sanded areas

and more primer

Both of us were under the boat applying the primer where needed.

and even more primer

Rolling on the bottom paint under 32,000 pounds of boat.

It took two days and two coats of paint on top of the primer and we finally finished painting the bottom

This side of bow thruster missing one shaft and one of the two propellers

Bow thruster gear box showing the missing shaft due to electrolysis

New gear box in place

Old vs. the new upgraded prop for bow thruster

Take out the air conditioner and crawl in. Our mechanic, Jack,
was able to crawl into a space no six-foot man could fit.

The round white thing is the bow thruster motor - 4 feet below the forward bunk. Jack would not give up
and eventually succeeded in installing the gear box.

Final result - New bow thruster with propellers installed

The view from our back door

All finished with the paint job! Looks great!

We have no shots of Colleen painting but she did. Imagine her in a very grungy pair of shorts and an old shirt, plastic gloves on her hands and a shower cap streaked with blue paint on her head. It's probably just as well we don't have a photo of that sight.

Old vs. new zinc anode - the new one will eventually look like the old one after
the zinc erodes, rather than the rest of the boat's metal parts

Marina employee replacing the left cutlass bearing

George and Debra and their boat going back into the water

Our new friends Debra and George.
We met them the first day we arrived here when their boat was pulled out also. These former New Jersey residents live in Homosassa, FL now and have cruised their boat down here from their old home. We hope to meet up with them again on the waterway.