High and Dry (May, 2022)

In which we surrender and go with the flow.

First of all, let me say that the marina where we stored the boat for the winter is staffed by real pros and super nice people. It's not really their fault the Perseverance is still in the barn and not on the water. Turns out the guy who was assigned to our job gave his two week notice the day we were up to check on the boat. I hope that's just a coincidence. (Truly it was a very understandable set of personal circumstances that just couldn't have happened at a worse time.)

Anyhow, short-handed and with a yard full of boats to launch they had little choice but to put us on the back burner. The work that got done on the Perseverance was top-notch, clearly the guy doing it was talented. I can see why they hated to lose him. But...it was not quite finished. When we showed up on Friday before Memorial Day it was clear that we would not be spending the holiday weekend on the water. Tuesday was the earliest possible splash date.

So, how did we spend our weekend? Saturday morning started off with visit from our friend Rick, who sold us the Perseverance. He's been very generous with his time while we learn the ropes. Rick flew down from Escanaba in the airplane he built in his garage. It's optimized for landing and take-off in short distances and he loves to take it 'off- road'. Davi took a lot of photos. The reason for his visit was to have a look at the hull while it's still out of the water and suggest any maintenance we should undertake. Overall the report was good but he showed me a few places where rust was popping through and suggested we grind down to the bare metal and paint a little coal tar on that. Actually, one of the spots that needed to be coated was, um, the entire keel where I dragged it on the rocks at Washington Island. I took a little kidding for that. Having oohed and aahed at all the new blue batteries and nearly completed wiring, Rick hopped back in his plane and headed off in search of a lonely beach to land on.

We had lunch with Lauren and Davi and they hurried back home to their cats with vague threats from us to visit them before the weekend was out. Free from familial encumbrance we turned our full attention to the boat. We couldn't do much about the battery system but the hull we could tackle. All we needed was a pint of Sherwin-Williams Corathane--the coal tar coating Rick recommended--and we needed to get it before everyone closed for the holiday. Luck was with us (so we thought) as the Sherwin-Williams Commercial Coatings dealer is just down the block from the marina. Alas, we are living in 2022. I thought the sales guy might cry when Jim asked for Corathane. "I don't have any. Nobody has any. I can't get anything for anybody. This job is just no fun anymore!"

Without the Corathane we were dead in the water (only figuratively since we're still in the barn). We would have to get some another way, come up with a substitute, or abandon the project. The lead mechanic at the marina (let's call him Ron), said there were some other options but not great ones. I hated to do it but we decided to ask Rick if we could borrow a cup of coal tar from his construction company. Rick said he'd let us know in the morning if they had any in the shop. I borrowed a grinder from Ron, who felt pretty bad we were stuck there, and started grinding the little rust spots on the hull while Jim paid attention to his pet project of making the aft deck a more inviting place to hang out and barbecue.

Sunday morning Rick texted us that he had Corathane! It was decided that Jim would grind the rust off the keel, a HUGE job that involves lying on your back under the boat. At least we were able to guilt Brian into loaning us a creeper. I got the easier job of driving 100 miles round trip to Escanaba to pick up a half-gallon of goop.

Two hours later, I arrived back at the barn after a pleasant drive along the shore of Green Bay. Jim crawled out from under the boat looking like he'd spent the day in an iron mine. Even with full PPE all that dust from the grinder flew straight into his face but he gamely crawled back under with the tar and started painting. That was the easy part. We finished in time to run down to Oconto for Crivello's famous family style chicken. I made Jim wash his face before we went into the restaurant. Fortunately the light wasn't too good in the dining room.

Jim spent Monday putting nice, blue bottom paint over the coal tar while I worked up top sanding and painting a few bare spots, including the top of the mast that Rick caught on the garage door on launch day last year. (I'm not the only one who runs into things.) We never made good on our threats to drop in on Davi and Lauren in Hancock, much to their relief. On the whole, it worked out OK that we are launching late. Rick wouldn't have been able to come look at the hull earlier. Ron worked on our boat every day of the holiday weekend and gave us lots of good tips and loaned us tools. We learned a lot that we would have missed otherwise and we didn't get sunburned because we did all our work in the barn.

Tomorrow is Tuesday...hopefully we will still be able to say we launched in May.