16th June: Cleaning Seafly aka Seascow!
Having established that the Lymington Scow rig would fit on the Seafly, the first step was to clean the seafly hull which has been neglected while I was trying to sell Seatern and then getting the jetty rebuilt. To summarise how the work the progressed:
| 29th May (Friday) | The second half of May saw some record breaking high temperatures and I didn’t feel like working on the hull. So it was the end of the month when I carreened the Seafly to work on her port side. While the mud washed off easily with the power-washer, there was lots of green which needed hand cleaning. I didn’t fully clean her down since I was worried in case I gave myself some repetitive strain injury with too much unaccustomed rubbing! |
| 1st June (Monday) | We were still struggling to staff NCI Stone Point so I didn’t get to work on the starboard side until the Monday. Since my previous work seemed to have caused no ill-effects I did a reasonably thorough rub down. The hull is showing some small blisters, presumably osmosis, but most are the size of a large barnacle scar so I’m not worrying about them too much. |
| 14th June (Sunday) | In contrast to the heat of May, the first half of June brought some cool weather. I was on watch at NCI Stone Point on 6th June (NCI Awareness Weekend) in rain and with gusts touching gale force. Indeed it was generally too windy to think of careening the Seafly until Sunday the 14th when unusually, I was not booked at Stone Point. I finished the port side, at least to a level which seems acceptable. During the process she started to turtle, which was a bit alarming but she was easy to push upright. The centreboard could do with painting but seemed sound. At some point I expect she will need a new, presumably fibreglass, one. |
| 15th June (Monday) | I cleaned the inside of the hull. The power-washer tends to abrade the floor paint a little and it really ought to be repainted but that would delay trying out the scow rig – anyway, that’s my excuse. I cleaned underneath the foredeck and emptied a significant amount of water from the forward buoyancy tank. I assume much of this came in yesterday when she was bow down on her side, I had noticed afterwards that the transom looked higher from the water than usual. I was pleased to find that the two side tanks were totally dry. |
| 16th May (Tuesday) | I rigged the mast with a bottle screw on the forestay and snap shackles on both shrouds as well as the forestay in case I want to take the mast off her (which will be true for the winter, I expect). I also re-fitted the toe-straps having previously had them resown by Sails of Merit. This all took longer than I expected – a long day’s work! |