Haul Out 02/04

In February of 2004, David and I had the boat hauled out for five days. Our plans were to get some new bottom paint on, raise the water line, add a boot stripe, replace most of the thru hulls and seacocks below the water line and replace the cutlass bearing. I was nervous the first day out, wondering how many of the ‘oh, and by the way...’ projects would pop up. Fortunately, no surprises arose during our haul out.

We hired Casey and his team at Mockingbird Marine to take care of the bottom job. They did a great job in sanding and painting. They also took care of sending the propeller out to get cleaned and have the tuning checked. They also took care of some minor gel coat repairs on the hull.

Our good friend and neighbor Dan assisted us in the other projects. While I was inside the boat removing the seacocks for the engine raw water intake, head intake, head overboard discharge, and holding tank discharge, David and Dan were busy outside marking the new water line and taping off for the new boot stripe. We used Awlgrip, the teal color was a good match for our canvas.

The thru hulls and seacocks came out without any trouble at all. I was surprised that it took only an hour to remove them all as I was anticipating a full day for the removal. We replaced the original bronze plug type seacocks with new Groco seacocks and replaced the thru hulls with newer bronze ones. We added a bronze screen on the air conditioner intake in the hopes that we would have fewer incidents of fish and such plugging the water line. When this happens the air conditioner overheats and shuts off, and in the heat of our Texas summers, the interior of the boat can reach temperatures in excess of 100 degrees. I also increased the seacock/thru hull size on the head overboard discharge from 1.25” to 1.5”. All in all, it took two days to remove the old and install the new. Much better than I thought it would be.

We didn’t replace the cutlass bearing, as it turned out the current one was still in very good shape. There were a few minor blisters on the bottom, but nothing that concerned us or needed immediate attention.

Dan and David worked on raising the waterline, and then proceeded to tape off for our new boot stripe. Our new waterline is about 8 inches above the designed waterline. We actually only raised it three inches, it appears that someone in the past had raised it five inches before. After Dan and David taped off for the new boot stripe, they went through all the prep work required for a good paint job, such as sanding, cleaning, re-taping, ect.

On day three of being on the hard, Dan laid the first coat of teal Awlgrip paint, and it looked really good. Later in the afternoon after lunch, Dan was able to lay a second coat. Since he had some extra paint left over, we grabbed all six of our dorades and painted the insides. Wow, things were looking good!

So by the end of day four, Bruadair had three fresh coats of bottom paint, new seacocks and thru hulls, a new boot stripe, new zincs, and a freshly tuned and cleaned propeller. We were actually ready to go back into the water Friday afternoon, but the tide had gone out and there was only about 5’ of water, we draw almost 6’. So we waited until Saturday morning and at 8:30am Bruadair was once again floating, and the tide was high enough for us to motor across the lake back to our slip. Wow!! What a difference having a clean bottom can make, she just moved right along.

We were very satisfied with the work that Casey and his team at Mockingbird Marine did, and will keep them in mind if we need help with anything in the future. We were also relieved, as the whole process was smooth without any glitches. It was great not to have any unexpected surprises (and expenses) during our haul out. Hopefully we won’t be needing another haul out for a few years.

Photo Album - Pictures taken during our haul out at Clear Lake Marine Center