Blue Moose: July 2013

With our plans to put Blue Moose up for sale we needed to find a place to store her. The east coast of Florida does not have as many options as you would think. The problem with storing her in the water was the threat of possible hurricanes which would mean a speedy trip for us back south to make sure she was fine. Also the growth that accumulates on the hull in just a few weeks is incredible. We had a quote for bottom cleaning in St. Augustine of $2.50 a foot. This would be over a hundred dollars about once a month. After seeing the scum on our lines and fenders I’m not surprised they charge that much. All kinds of decomposing “things” floated by and sometimes got held against the hull by the current. The visibility under water is probably about 6 inches.
We finally decided on Westland Marina in Titusville. We drove up to check it out because sometimes (lots of times) what you see on the internet is nothing like what you see in person. The marina is right off the Intracoastal Waterway and has a lift capable of hauling us out of the water. They have new bathrooms with good showers, a new laundry room and a lounge with TV and air conditioning. Plus, we could work on the boat ourselves. A lot of marinas don’t allow that. Perfect! Everything we need.

I was looking after the paperwork end of things when they hauled her. That’s probably a good thing because I always get a little concerned about little things like, oh…dropping her! No worries. Rick drives the crane like it’s a little car and within a few minutes she was getting the pressure wash treatment.

Then she was moved into her spot in the yard. By the way, Cricket stayed on board throughout all of this. After all she’s been through I’m sure this was no big deal.

While we did have power and water to the boat while in the yard, our air conditioning only works while in the water. Also our holding tanks which had been emptied and cleaned meant that we would have to use the marina bathrooms.
Time to get down to the cleaning and emptying. The summer weather had arrived and every afternoon brought rain. Along with temperatures in the mid nineties the clouds would start to build in the early afternoon and by 3 or 4 rain like I have never seen before would be slamming us. We usually started work early in the morning and tried to stay out of the sun to escape some of the heat. Thankfully, the canvas shop gave us an air conditioner to borrow while we were there. Even still the inside of the boat got pretty hot during the day.

the hull buffed

the dock lines washed and de-salted

It’s a good thing we unloaded a lot of stuff while at the dock in St. Augustine. Even still we filled both the van and a U-Haul trailer with our belongings. Wow, did we have stuff! We easily had enough non-perishable food to last for months. Canned tuna, rice, coffee. Our stockpile of medications and toiletries would rival any pharmacy. I wonder what the shelf life is on Bandaids? I think we have 1000 and I’m not sure we used 1.