 | |
| Faith, with new life lines before cleaning |
This year we are really, really late getting to the boat. Actually, it turned out that Faith is cleaner and drier than in years past!
It is significant, too, that we have our friend Mike with us. He caravan-ed down with us to get a sense of this cruising thing. He is also helping to repair some issues that we need to correct before we do the El Salvador Rally (hopefully next season). He strung my new life lines on at a faster pace than I was able to and yesterday we attacked the leaking main water tank!! This was while the boat yard guys washed and waxed Faith until she shined like new so we just chugged away at the task inside the boat while they polished her up. By about 2:00 p.m. we were ready for a break at JJ's while the cleaner/waxer chaps had about another hour, to an hour and a half to go. We got back to the yard after lunch to find them still working away but the boat looked magnificent!
The tank problem is going to take a good while to fix. We succeeded in getting down to the tank but now need to figure out where the leak is and then get it repaired... likely welded. At this point I don't think we will be able to bring the tank out of the boat because it appears that they built the boat around the tank before they fastened the deck on.
In any case, there is about 5 days until we are scheduled to splash the boat and that date can be changed. It might need to be changed anyway because the marina is very full and we have to take the tide into account to get a valid splash day.
