YACHT "WANDERING STAR": Labouring over Labor Day

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Labouring over Labor Day

The boatyard at Bock Marine North Carolina - with "Bad Bunny" on the right

While the rest of the United States enjoy a long bank holiday weekend over the Labor day to celebrate those hard working people, Sim and I, well, we are still labouring away. It still feels like one thing after another. Old aluminium water tanks are being replaced due to major corrosion – we had to cut one tank in half to get it out of the companion way and were surprised at the build up of deposits where pitting had been on the inside of the tank. Needless to say any replacements are going to be plastic this time around.

Our fridge has been leaking for some time now, so that is being dried out and repaired and refilled with gas and it seems the freezer needs to be looked at too. Oh the woes of no fridge when working on a hot humid day! With a steel boat you cannot have any leaks inside (as we all know steel boats rust from the inside out) and no matter how good your paint system is it will eventually lead to that dreaded R word. There will be no point of us having done all this good (stressful, hard, dirty) work, if water is going to drip, drip away. And of course we are still chipping, grinding, sanding and wire brushing – creating so much mess that if I dwell on it further I’m going to drive myself insane.

The leaky water tank was so big we had to cut it in half to take it out of the boat.

For nearly five weeks we have been in the yard, but the time has passed in a flash. We flop into bed early and get up (with aches and pains) early (normally to the sound of the travel lift as it fires up its engine at the crack of dawn right by where I sleep). We have met some lovely people in the yard. I go for daily walks with Kay from yacht “Bad Bunny”. John and Kay are preparing their boat for some major sailing. We had a girl’s day out at the maritime museum in Beaufort and lunch at a quirky diner in Morehead City where you can get a HUGE plate of food for just $7. And my first introduction to hush puppies – a savoury deep fried cornbread, yum - very different from the frozen syrup drinks of my youth. Our walks take us through a private development of huge well spaced out houses. It’s so green and so pretty and so quintessential of the well to-do parts of North Carolina. And I still can’t get over the wildlife. Dragonflies and butterflies the size of my hands, snakes, rabbits and giant frogs and crickets. The deer roam free. I love this place. The tall pines, the style of houses built out of wood, the fields of corn and fields of sunflowers. If I sit peacefully and drown out the noise from the yard and the traffic on the bridge across the ICW – I can hear the cacophony of chirps and birrups and songs of the strange insects and birds, so different from the Caribbean cicada hum and just for a moment I can escape my boat yard environment.