Legs and bottom

31 August 2016

I'm probably not going to lift the boat out this winter, will leave it till next year when I understand we're dredging the marina so we'll all have to come out.

However, with some time off work and fair weather, I decided to beach Elsa on the club slipway so I could wash and paint the bottom. I took some time over preceding days to dig out the beaching legs and plan how to do this. Georgia came to help me and the only complication was that we found some other club guys also beaching the committee boat for urgent prop repairs. But we all fitted in.


Elsa's legs are wooden with a single bolt that goes through a hull fitting, and guy ropes fore and aft from the foot of each leg. The existing bolts were rusted so I worked them out and bought shiny new ones. On the day these turned out to be 5mm too short so some spares had to be found from the club tool-shed but with me aboard Elsa, Georgia in a RIB beside me, and assorted club members to throw ropes about we ended
up with the legs attached, the boat floating above the slipway, and ready for the tide to go out.




I thought she'd sit with her nose on the ground but it turned out that she just sat on her keel stub leaning slightly onto the port leg, quite stable.




As the tide dropped we pressure washed, first the committee boat and then mine, to get the weed and barnacles off, then the only way to paint her was to get my old sailing clothes and boots on and lie down on the muddy slipway. We managed to get a whole coat on and then a second around the waterline before we were too tired to continue, we'd used up most of the antifoul and the tin was a bit contaminated with wet mud anyway...





I carefully removed my outer clothes, boots, and hat and threw the whole lot in the bin and we started clearing up.Once we peeled off the masking tape she looked quite good.



Leaving her on the slipway when the tide comes in tonight but going to float her off and back to the berth tomorrow!


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