Scrub a Dub Dub... Barnacles and now Oysters??

 Hello everyone (delusions of grandeur there, I know there's probably only one person reading.. Hi Mum!).

 To be honest the issues over the past year have not only been physical (recovering from the Heart attack last year, then Covid back in February) but mental as well. I'm not quite "feeling" the boat yet. 

All I've manged to do over the past few months when I've been able to get on board is pump the bilges out. Storms, rodents chewing holes in my dinghy amongst other things has conspired to stop me doing much of anything to the boat over the past few months.

However, this weekend I finally stopped faffing around with the boat and got some proper stuff done.

In preparation towards getting the ol' tub out of the water and into a yard for some TLC and a bunch of anti-foul, I scraped the bottom last Saturday. 

It certainly needed it:

Plenty of weed and probably a double layer of Barnacles living on there and for the first time ever... Oysters! Yep, about a dozen of them tucked up under the keels, about a couple of inches across. So I don't know how old they were but it's obviously a sign I haven't scrubbed the bottom for a couple of years.

Oysters (I think, I'm no shellfish expert!):

First things first: Breakfast:

Then the scraping commenced.

Don't let anyone tell you sailing is glamorous; not at this end of the scale anyway. Lying on your back in the mud scraping barnacles off the hull and chiselling oysters off there as well (tenacious little blighters they are!) isn't pulling into a posh Marina in Monaco.

Anyway, mission accomplished although I had to pace myself lest I bring on the chest pain again.

This is what it looked like after an hour or two:

Not as thorough a job as previous years, but the amount of work to get a pristine white hull wasn't in me on Saturday.

Anyway, scrub done, I did a bit of modification to the solar charging circuit, adding a charge controller to moderate the charging current and moving the plug for the solar panel. No pictures of that yet as it's not complete, There are other things being done in the electric/electronic side of things that I've been wanting to get done for months, but not been able to do.

There will be more posts in the coming weeks. I'm now well, plus the Mrs is back working every other weekend like she used to so the weekends she's working will be boat weekends!

I really, really, really need to get the window rubbers replaced. It's been on the to-do list since I got Sprite 2! They are on their last legs and will not last more than a couple of months now. One of the font window rubbers now has a visible hole. So that will be the first to get sorted. I have enough rubber for one window. If I've bought the correct size and it works with the first window I'll get more ordered and get the whole lot sorted. 

I've booked the Monday 21st and Tuesday 22nd of June off work, which including the Weekend should give me four days to get the boat on the beach and do the dodgy window and some other jobs.

Other jobs include the mast beam. The oak sleeper has been drying out in our outhouse now for a year, so it really should be dry enough to use. I roughly measured up the beam and I should be able to make a hash of it at least once and still have spare wood to make another couple of beams if I have to. 

But to do that I need to drop the mast and if I've dropped the mast then I might as well replace the lights for LED units and their wiring. And change the coax cable for the VHF antenna while I'm at it. So the mast beam becomes a big job.

But for now getting the electronics sorted would be an easy job so that's what I'll try to get sorted in the meantime.