Getting Ready

It doesn't seem like two minutes since we were dropping Naughty-Cal back in the water after her spring spruce up but all too soon once again we are preparing our plan of attack for the next one.

All being well we will be lifting Naughty-Cal back out of the water soon after christmas and the new years celebrations are over during the first week that the yard staff are back at work.

This time around we plan to do a lot of work on the stern drive. It is ready for a new stainless steel shaft as the current one is now getting very worn and not creating a proper seal with the double shaft oil seals. As well as the new shaft we will be replacing all of the oil seals, the bellows, the anodes and the bushes and flushing the drive through a few times with fresh oil to clear out all of the water contamination we currently have in the system.

As well as this we will be removing the remaining antifoul paint from the drive. We applied this last year but we dont really like the effect, so it is to be stripped off, reprimed and we will repaint it in the proper Volvo Penta teflon paint. I might even treat it to a new set of transfers to make it look good as new again!

As well as working on the drive we will have a multitude of other jobs to work on including replacing the Sealine decals, new name transfers (dont worry we are not changing her name just freshening up the look!) new Canal and River Trust index numbers, polising, cleaning, waxing, the list goes on and on. The last job we will do, just before she is relaunched will be a fresh couple of coats of antifoul paint. As we stripped it all back last time we hope that all this will entail is painting over the existing antifoul paint which this year still looks in good order.

We plan to have Naughty-Cal out of the water for between eight and ten weeks depending on the weather and how well we progress with the work. No doubt we will still be running around during the last weekend though trying to get the jobs finished off.