Ready For Lift Off

It’s coming around to that time of year again and we are getting Naughty-Cal ready for lift off, well, lift out anyway.

March each year we pull Naughty-Cal out of the water for a couple of weeks to give her a good fettling in time for the new boating season. This year we are pulling her our slightly later towards the end of March as Easter is late this year and we want her looking her best in time for our first holiday of the year.

So far we have:

• Purchased the antifoul paint. Last year we bought some from the Newark boat jumble. It worked so well that we have purchased the same stuff again. The chap who produces the paint is a small manufacturer and as such his prices are excellent. This year it has cost us £20 for a 2.5 litre can. Enough for two coats on Naughty-Cal’s hull.
• Purchased the stern drive oil. Naughty-Cal had a full stern drive service last March so this year will just need the oil dropping and replacing. If there is any water contamination in the oil we will have the shaft seals replaced as well.
• Purchased fluid for the hydraulic trim ram. Last year we developed a hydraulic fluid leak from the stern drive trim ram. This left the hydraulic fluid looking like milkshake. The leak has been fixed and the fluid replaced, but the oil in the reservoir is still milky presumably from water still in the system as the oil is no longer leaking out. We will replace this fluid again to try and flush out the water.
• Purchased a new set of mooring ropes. The set currently on the boat have lasted two seasons and about 600 hours of use. They are now starting to show signs of age so we took the decision to replace them all. We picked up a great deal for some braided lines so couldn’t say no. We got 38m of 12mm braided Marlow navy rope for £23.50. RRP on this rope is £2.40 per metre. This rope should be far more suitable for our boat than the 14mm three strand rope we currently use and will look a lot smarter as well.
• Purchased a new set of fender ropes. We recently purchased a set of fender flutes to allow easy adjustments to the height of fenders when coming in to moor. Our existing fender ropes are however a little bit too hefty for the flutes. So we have bought a new set of braided Marlow fender ropes also in navy. These will allow the fenders heights to be set much more quickly and will match the new mooring ropes.

Items on the list that we still need to purchase include:

• New heads for the machine polisher
• T-Cut, Autoglym Super Resin polish and G3 cutting compound
• Gel coat filler
• Sterndrive anodes

We have acquired a few minor scuffs during the last season that will require a few repairs. Most of them should flat out and polish back up but one at least will require some filling. Also we have a few holes to fill where the old transom gate was fixed to the superstructure. The new transom gate has fixings in a slightly different position so the old fixing holes need some work to look visually acceptable.

Hopefully this little lot of repairs, maintenance and polishing should take a couple of weekends before Naughty-Cal is relaunched and ready for the 2011 season. It will be the hardest season of boating we have attempted to date, so hopefully, after her spruce up Naughty-Cal will be in a good mood for the rest of the year!!