Lift out

 I started this week by taking off the sails and the spray hood ready for lifting out on Wednesday, as I had an appointment with the coronary rehab team on Wednesday the plan was to move the boat round to the lift out berth on Tuesday afternoon. Once the berth was clear I fired up the engine and tried to get the stern to swing to starboard using the prop walk, however there was quite a stiff southerly blowing which was causing the stern to swing to port and the prop walk would not overcome this. I think that the problem is that New Morning only has a 12"x7" propeller as the engine has a 1:1 gearbox great for reducing the drag when sailing but just when prop walk might be useful its not there. In the end I had to go down the creek to a wider part and turn round, travel half a mile to cover 50 yards. I went over to Conyer today to find New Morning lifted out, pressure washed and sitting in a cradle so I got on with cleaning and stowing the fenders and stowing the mooring lines before conducting an inspection of the hull below the waterline, the first time I had seen it in over two years, it all looked pretty good apart from the brown east coast mud deposits which are like concrete. The keel looks good with no rust showing, it had a good dose of rust converter and two coats of underwater primer before anti fouling. 

East coast mud

Before New Morning was launched I had to remove a very poor repair to the base of the skeg, it did not take a lot of effort, in fact the whole lump just fell off this was detailed in a much earlier post, I then ground out the defective GRP before building op the base of the skeg with woven rovings and epoxy and on inspection it would appear that it was a successful repair.

As can bee seen from the photographs above some of the anti fouling has fallen off but the skeg repair is still sound. The cutlass bearing is good for further service but the shaft anode has disappeared so will need to be replaced. The hull anode is showing some wastage but is probably fit for further service. So really all that is required this winter will be a scrape down to remove the mud deposits and a new shaft anode.

Propeller shaft and hull anode