How's Your Bottom?

SHIP'S LOG:

Yesterday was a marvelous day for sailing. There was a nice breeze out of the west, the sun was warm and it was not humid, and the water was warm. But I didn't got sailing as there was a maintenance task that needed to be performed. It was once again time to clean the bottom.

Cleaning the bottom is often vest done on real hot and humid and windless days as you get to stay nice and cool and the boat doesn't move all that much. So Wednesday was a good day to do it, even the good breeze out of the west kept the boat in place.

The bottom paint on ABISHAG, what remains of it that is, was put on back in April of 2010. It is an "ablative paint" which means that to do its job, it wears off a little at a time. I prefer this as it eliminates one of the real pains-in-the-butt of the Spring Commissioning, sanding the bottom paint to remove the old pain and make the surface smooth to receive the new paint. This means you have to sand and paint every year to make sure that you have paint that "works." with ablative paint, if there is paint on the hull, it is working. And the protection doesn't degrade if the boat is out of the water. Come the spring, or even the fall if you wish, you first touch up those places where the paint has worn away and then put on two coats over the entire bottom. The boat moving through the water slowly wears away the paint, keeping the surface clean, working and smooth. Going aground in the ICW does the same though wear-away factor is considerably greater. In fact, at the bottom of the keel, there is no paint left at all to discourage the nasty nautical creatures from attaching themselves to the bottom and making it home.

There were a couple of places near the bow where the paint was worn away because of regular contact with the mooring ball. There were some places along the side where the dinghy rested that also caused the paint to go away. In these spots, whole colonies of barnacles had affixed themselves and didn't want to leave. They had to be physically removed with a paint scraper. Where the paint was still present on the hull, "slime" a moldy underwater scum had coated the surface. To the "slime" barnacles also attached themselves but a simple brushing with a stiff brush removed the slime and the barnacles with it. The front edge of the keel and the bottom and up the sides of the keel from the bottom for a couple of inches, where all the paint had been worn away and the barrier coat exposed by my "discoveries of new land" along the ICW were seriously coated with barnacles and sea plant growth. It took a lot of diving and some hard work to get all that stuff off the boat, but it got done.

Some of the little nasties didn't take too kindly to their eviction, the brine shrimp especially. If you were ever a kid and wondered what those "Sea Monkeys" were that you would find advertised in the back of comic books, well they are brine shrimp. When you disturb them from their "homes" the immediate seek new accommodations and grab hold of anything solid near by. Now there must have been some sort of "regional convention" because they sure were lots of them and the solid object near by that many of them grasped onto was me. They latch on pretty securely and do so everywhere. After cleaning the bottom and getting back on the boat, I had to "de-shrimp" myself. The biggest of the shrimps might be an inch long and thin as thread, but they hang on tenaciously. Then again, they are see creatures and leaving the water deprives them of their ability to breathe. I went ashore and took a long, hot shower and all the little Sea Monkeys" went to Sea Monkey heaven. Of course, there are billions and billions to replace them, and along with the billions and billions of other sea creatures that love to attach to the bottoms of boat, without a doubt ABISHAG's bottom will need another scrapping and cleaning before the end of the month. O, Joy!