One of the joys of owning a salt water based boat is that you need to get it out of the water once every three years, scrape the barnacles off and paint the bottom of the boat. It makes for a much easier path through the water when you are not dragging a bunch of growth and critters with you. So if you have never experienced this type of event, I have captured it and will post it for you all to enjoy.
As for who does this, I went to the Port of Olympia, Swantown Boat works which is run by the City of Olympia. The bottom painting was done by Pettit Marine who is also based out of Swantown. The haul out/return trip, 3 lay days, and various environment fees ran about $500. The bottom paint and some mechanical work ran about $1,000. So here is the boat journey.
I had two great helpers, in Stet and Lynne Palmer a Big Thank You to both of them for their assistance. The picture above is Stet aboard Moon Glow, who was there to Shepard Star Gazer over to Swantown as my shifting linkage was a little shaky. Lynne was aboard Star Gazer to help me not smack into anything. Olympia always looks awesome from the water!
Here they are staging the boat lift and making sure the straps are correct so they don’t damage the prop and shaft or drop the dang thing.
Well they got her out of the water, now let’s see what issues we have. The best case scenerio is she if filthy dirty. The worst would be some major damage in blisters or chunks of fiberglass coming off. This is generally not the case in this vintage of Catalina. It was born in 1978 and they did not know that much about fiberglass and built the boat about 3 times thicker then it needed to be. This boat is a sailing battleship.
Dirty she is, but no real issues. Pretty happy about that and now she just needs to get laid up on the hard.
About every six months you need to replace the Zinc’s. They go on the shaft and stop the electrolysis from eating the prop and shaft and anything else metal. It is a good day when there are zinc’s to remove! Last time I swapped them out was August 2014, which considering it is May 2015 I am glad to see some zinc left.
All painted and ready to head back to the open sea. Hoping for a great summer of sailing and boating in the beautiful Puget Sound!
Zboatman's Journey 