Return to Stingray Point
Innamorata
Steve & Carol
Thu 5 Sep 2024 14:29
We got back to Innamorata in early September and had hoped to be in the water and heading up to Annapolis in early October for the boat show there but of course plans don't always go as well as we expect when it comes to boats! When we got back we took a few days to get sorted and put some of the things we put inside the boat back outside in their rightful home but with the sails, sheets and some other bits still inside the front cabin and Steves tool room were both rather full! Our lovely friends Tom and Sabrina who we met in 2018 when we did the OCC rally are in another boat yard in Deltaville and were kind enough to lend us their spare vehicle for local shopping - it had a few engine management warnings so we were advised not to go far, but it was fantastic for going to get things from the hardware shop and local shops and Sabrina took us into the nearest town with big shops like Aldi, Walmart home depot and Ace hardware. We were actually truly spoilt while we were in Deltaville as friends Emma and Stefan arrived back at a marina in Deltaville they are planning on staying a while and doing some road trips so purchased a car and also took me shopping to Gloucester a few times to stock the cupboards up so we don't have to get heavy tins etc later to stock up before we go to the Bahamas. Steve soon set to work sanding the copper coat antifouling down - we had a lot of small areas where it had failed - leaving the old gelcoat exposed so it was the first job to tackle, the sanding was hard work and took a lot longer than Steve had anticipated! I tried to help but was pretty inefficient although I did sand some of one side Steve had to go over it to do it properly 🫣. Before Sanding  Steve sanding  We also met new friends in the boatyard including a dutch couple Vincent and Kimberly who were also copper coating their big new to them yacht, Vincent fits Lithium Batteries in St Maarten so Steve picked his brains and we made the decision to do some changes to the batteries and charging system and go to lithium batteries - well all that was Steve's job as well - I just did the ordering 🤣 and even then I didn’t get it right all the time, unfortunately somehow I ordered the wrong solar panels, which, when we enquired about returning them it was going to cost $200 in shipping fees 😱 so we ended up deciding to keep them even though they weren’t the upgrade we wanted, they do have a slightly bigger wattage than the old ones we had so should work a little bit better🤞. Weather delayed the copper coat application as you need to put it on in one day when there isn’t any rain forecast for 48 hours - of course when the boat was ready to have its new copper coat it decided to rain quite often!!! Luckily we had even more jobs to do now the new batteries had arrived! Anyway the weather picked up and with no% chance of rain in the forecast we decided to do the copper coating - basically its hard work as once you start you have to keep going until there are 4 coats on the whole underwater hull, Steve mixed and started on the front port side and worked towards the back while i started on the rear Starboard side and worked forward, once we had done a side each we then began the second coat, so I painted over where Steve had and vice versa, with a short break for something to eat we kept going until there were 4 coats so we had each painted the boat twice - well steve again did more than me as he finished his fist so helped me finish my last side, once finished we were admiring our work and began to clear up when the sky grew grey - not a good sign, Steve started to put masking tape above the top edge around the hull to act as guttering to stop the rain running onto the copper coat but before he had finished it began to rain and then it Poured down 😱😱😡. We couldn’t stop the water from the scuppers funning down the hull and and soon we had a river running from them washing the copper coat off. consequently we were rather annoyed and disappointed! Coppercoat finished but look at the sky!  and after the rain!   Steve had to sand the damaged bits down and repaint when we moved the supports to paint those area and in the end it wasn’t such a disaster! You have to sand the whole copper coat down before you launch to expose the copper and activate it.  In the end she looked pretty good with here new Coppercoat and polished topsides 🤩  It wasn’t all work we had a nice social time, Friday evenings became boatyard get together evenings when everyone relaxed with a drink and something to eat.  Steve also enjoyed a little jamming session with Tom and Sabrina at their Marina club house    We also went our for quite a few meals with friends, including Kim and Ann we met in Potimao in 2021, Stefan and Emma and Tom and Sabrina. We were invited to a couple of BBQs and near by marinas and went to a bar to watch an American Football Game with Tom and Sabrina - they are The Kansas City Chiefs fans, we now understand the rules a little better 😀, all in all we had a great time with friends and met some great new people.   Life in a boatyard has its challenges and we were keen to get afloat again, the highest tide was on the 18th October so we booked to launch then and amazingly we got everything done we needed to and were launched as planned, we were waved off by some of our new friends and headed off straight away, this time we did bump the bottom in Broad creek as we headed out - we gave the shoaled area a little too much of a wide berth and touched the bottom on the other side - however Innamorata powered over it and did her own bit of dredging as she went 🤣.  |