These past few weeks have been a bit of a hardship. The boat needed to be hauled out of the water so we could put in a new cutlass bearing (supports the shaft where it exits the back
of 
the keel) & put on new bottom paint. We expected to be out & back in the water within three days. Unfortunately, things didn't work out that way. When the boat was pulled out, we noticed a line wrapped around the propeller. Turns out that line bent our shaft out of shape which meant we needed to fix it. We also sent our prop to the shop to be trued and balanced. Turns out the prop shop was backlogged and instead of the quick three days we ended up in the boatyard for 14 long, dirty, loud days & nights. Aside from the fact that we couldn't use our bathrooms or showers (got a key from the marina & had to go down the ladder & across two parking lots to get to the bathrooms), we also had to be conservative with our cooking because cleaning the dishes was difficult. It seemed that everyday in the boatyard was a trial.
Some of the highlights include:
• Having the travel lift (which you can see in one of the photos - it's the thing that picks you up out of the water & moves you around on land) next to us one day while it was windy the rigging loudly banged away for hours.
• The semi in the photo parked next to us one day. For over six hours it idled its engine. After knocking on the door & getting no answer, I ended up calling the police & they had to come twice to get him to turn it off permanently. Grade A Turkey.
• Electricity in the yard was cut one weekend & we had to have Sam hunt around for a live outlet. As our batteries were quite low, and we couldn't run our generator out of the water we needed to be plugged in at all times.
• See the photo of LC on the bow. There is a low shed that was right next to us. One night, she decided to go exploring. We didn't realize anything was amiss until we heard her crying. Unfortunately, though she easily jumped from the boat to the shed, she seemed unwilling to jump back. Took some coaxing from me & Pete had to climb a ladder to try & get her. She didn't like the idea of going back down the ladder w/him & fought her way from him and then decided to make the jump. Silly cat. Funny thing, she seemed to like the boatyard. Like I said, silly cat.
• When we took the shaft & propeller out of the boat, we had to clear everything out of the holds below deck so we could access the shaft seal and coupling. We piled boxes and stored goods anywhere we could, but it was a real pain. Sam's room became a storage area (stacked deck to top with stuff). He had to spend one night on the couch though he didn't seem to mind much.
• Note the paper on the floor - Pete puts that down so we didn't get dirt on the carpet. It made crunching noises whenever you walked on it & got pretty dirty. It was the first thing we ripped up when we got home.
• Just when we thought we had everything moving along towards completion, the prop shop sent our original prop back because it was too old and brittle to work on. Luckily we had a spare onboard, but it was still more rushing around and more delays.
• We did make some improvements while we waited. Pete was able to get a really good deal on one of the old helm seats from work at the Vallejo Bay Link Ferry. The new one is much more comfortable & looks great.
• We added a boot stripe to the boat. You can see it in the photo where the boat is on the travel lift. It's the added stripe next to the bottom paint. Just a little extra something we did as we had the time.
So now, thankfully, we are floating again. Feels great!! Still lots more to do but the list is getting smaller. One month deadline to departure. Woo-hoo!
