Normal people run around like gobbling turkeys during Thanksgiving week… frantically driving, visiting, shopping, cooking, eating and more eating.

Us? We ran around like turkeys too…except on the boat. Up and down 9ft ladders, ducking in and out of companionway entries, squeezing in and out of tight engine rooms, reaching into inaccessible lockers…ah, the joys of boatyard boat work.

Preventing Undue Perspiration
We’d decided to begin our seasonal work detail a couple weeks later this year. Our aim? Avoiding the typical high-90’s late October weather, which about killed us last year. This slight delay worked in our favor, with high-70’s to mid-80’s all week. Jealous yet? Don’t be. Instead of sailing the high seas during Thanksgiving, we were in San Carlos…in the boatyard… working, working, working. Our Thanksgiving week looked like this:

Replace Prop Shaft and Cutlass Bearing
Why? We’re hoping to resolve Brian’s nemesis – minor engine vibration. A big job with many steps, this could either go really smoothly or turn into a complete nightmare.

• Disassemble the steering quadrant (chain under the wheel linking to the rudder).
• Remove the gudgeon (bronze piece holding the rudder post to the keel).
• Drop the rudder (not easy…it’s juuust a bit heavy).
• Pull out the drive shaft after undoing interior coupler (piece of cake, for once).
• Remove the cutlass bearing. (When pounding doesn’t work, hack it out!)
• Clean the bronze gudgeon, bolts & stainless rudder post. (Scrape, sand, polish, repeat.)
• Reverse: Put in new cutlass bearing, drive shaft, coupler, repack stuffing box, add new hose clamps to the rudder post (all 4 were cracked), put the rudder and gudgeon back, reassemble the quadrant.  Done!

This entire procedure took about 4 days. (OK, we did take a day off to go see Justice League.)

Fortunately, things went relatively smoothly, except for…(insert dramatic Monster Truck announcer voice)…Brian’s Cutlass Bearing Battle. This short metal tube fits through the hull, cradling the prop shaft perfectly in place (see photos). While the shaft spins, the cutlass bearing remains rock steady. Knowing its tight fit would cause difficulty removing, Brian welded his own puller tool this summer to assist in this procedure (yes, he really is MacGyver). But this bearing was practically fused to the hull. And its walls were so thin, his manufactured puller just made mincemeat of the metal. Yanking, tugging, jerking and twerking did absolutely nothing.

Frustrated, Brian was forced to slice it up. With a SawzAll. Veerry carefully. Try using a Sawzall blade inside a hole the size of your mouth…sawing through the bearing wall without nicking the skin below. Nice image, huh? He was not happy doing it; but he won the Bearing Battle.

New Steering Cables
Since we needed to undo the steering assembly to work on the drive shaft, we decided to just replace it altogether. After 23-years, it’s probably about time. This is the perfect example of how one project leads to another project because, well, “since we’re in here taking this apart, we might as well replace it, otherwise we’ll regret it down the road when it fails…all because we were lazy or cheap.”​

Our steering chain/cable threads up into the steering column and over the wheels’ gear mechanism. So, of course to replace it, we must remove the wheel along with the compass sitting atop the binnacle.  Again, another “might as well” project. Now, we may as well replace the bearing, circlips, plastic washers and o-rings attached to the wheel shaft. This was like doing an operation inside a 5“ hole. Flashlight in one hand, I played surgical tech with the other, providing Brian tools upon request. Needlenose pliers. Here. Dental pic. Got it. RoboGrips. Black or grey? Why does every boat project feel like a surgical procedure?
 
New Cockpit Drain Hose
Our cockpit drain hoses were original to the boat. So we planned on replacing them this season. (We tried last year but couldn’t find the right hose, so we brought some with us). Upon removal, we discovered one of the two cracked. Good thing this project was high on our list! Each hose runs from the cockpit, through the engine room, and out the hull to the ocean. So any water running into the cockpit (from washing the boat or from boarding seas) will leak right into the engine room via a split hose. Not good. Engines and water don’t mix.  Sinking is even worse.

Doing The Hard Stuff First
We decided to complete the above hard projects first. The ones that involved Brian awkwardly wedged in the engine room (“the hole”) for a week straight. The ones that could become super-complicated if everything didn’t go smoothly. The ones we didn’t want to do.

Our thoughts: get ‘em over with now and we won’t be too tired or too irritated or too lazy later, ultimately determining “well… we can wait ‘til next year.” Our plan worked.

We have at least another week of boatyard drudgery, but it’s all stuff we’ve done before. Painting, painting and more painting. Hard work…but easily done. Would I rather be watching the Macy’s parade and eating every hour with naps in between? Yes, please. Would I rather be shopping or driving in the Black Friday mayhem? No way. I’ll actually take boatwork over THAT.

Today is haul-out day! After two weeks of solid work, we are more than ready. A 9am appointment is the perfect time slot. No one ahead of us means we can motor over to the ramp at 8am, check in with the marina, have breakfast at Barracuda Bob’s and wait for the yard guys to show up. No rush.

The guys came right on time, but for some reason thought we had our own trailer (lots of smaller, trailerable boats here). So they had to go back and get the boat-lift. By 9:20, a tractor pushing a long, low-bed trailer sprouting hydraulic jack-stands came rumbling down the road to the launch ramp. Three handlers warped our boat along the quay, pushing and pulling and dragging Indigo up to the edge of the trailer, finally sliding her keel into the V-slot.

Tilted House
Indigo has always been hauled out using a Travel-Lift: a hulking, 4-legged, metal creature on wheels that uses two slings slid under the keel, lifting a boat up and out of the water. This is the first time we have been to a marina that used a boat ramp trailer – it made me a bit jumpy.

As the tractor rolled away dragging Indigo out of the water, up, up, up the boat-ramp, her bow lifted up out of the water at an awkward angle. In my mind…it’s a terrible, unnatural angle. I imagined her suddenly slipping backwards and hurtling back into the water, hitting her keel on the shallow bottom, sharply twisting over to the side, careening, shrouds snapping, the mast cartwheeling into the water... This moment was terrifying, I could barely breathe, my chest hurt, tears began to roll… like a parent watching their child plunging off the high dive for the first time. This is my house and my house is severely tilted. A house should never be tilted. Not like we haven’t been angled upward that much on a wave crest…still. You just don’t want to see that. Period.

Rollin’ Down the Highway
But after a few seconds, Indigo leveled out and continued to roll out of the water and on down the road. Whew…I started breathing again. My moment of panic subsided (I was not the only one panicking) and we walked behind her, following our baby.

Pickup Ride
After walking a few hundred yards, the tractor driver noticed us and indicated we should climb into the pickup bed of the leader vehicle. Wheeeee! Riding in a pickup bed! Like we used to do as kids… before multitudes of safety-conscious bans overtook our country. One of the best things about Mexico is their lack of laws. Why can't we just use common sense and evaluate our own risk? Pick-up bed + quiet road + 5mph + 10 minutes… pretty sure we’ll be OK.

Marina Seca
A half mile down the road is the Marina Seca (translated as “Dry Marina”). Our storage facility for the summer, it consists of two separate gated areas: the work yard and the storage yard. Any work on your boat must be done at the work yard; once your boat is hauled over to the storage yard you have just a few minutes to check on it but then you must leave. No one but Marina workers and recognized monthly maintenance guys are allowed in the storage yard.  This keeps out the riff-raff and prevents theft.

4 Hours in the Yard is Enough
We hoped to spend as little time in the yard as possible. Finishing touches included: tying down the sun cover tarps, finish securing the caprail cover, run fresh water through engine, close all thru-hulls, plug drain/vent holes with Scotchbrite pads (discouraging insects from taking up residence while allowing drainage/airflow), place mice & roach bait cups, double & triple check that we’d done everything on our list.

I spent two hours waxing the hull while Brian worked elsewhere. I did half the job from the ground, intending to use the ladder for the unreachable areas. But the rental ladder was the tall, non-adjustable, lean-to type; it rested up against the flexible lifelines and was too unstable. So, we gave up on the idea of finishing that one last project.

The other problem was, after being in the yard for only 4 hours in 90-degree heat, we were on the verge of exhaustion. The angle of the blazing San Carlos sun must be different in April. I have been severely burned once in the last 2 weeks (the gross, oozy-blistery-bubbly kind) and on the verge again today – I’d never been sunburned in Mexico prior. So coupled with the sun and the working and the climbing up and down a 20ft ladder all day, I was glad we hadn’t planned on taking the bus to Phoenix that same night. We were DONE.

Good-Bye and Good-Night
After waving goodbye to Indigo, hauled off to her final resting place for 6 months, we walked to the Marinaterra Hotel, a ½ mile away, lugging all our baggage (3 small bags and a laptop). We washed away all the unavoidable boatyard grime and watched TV for the rest of the evening sprawled out in a bed wider than our entire boat! But the monstrous lumpy mattress felt like cardboard (already missing my boat bed), voices of cackling children rang through the adjacent walls and the tiled hallway outside echoed every single footfall and murmur. Still, we slept like rocks, grateful there was no loud wedding mariachi band on the terrace that night.

Delaying the Inevitable
In the morning, we awoke from a dead sleep to the pleasant sounds of scraping furniture in the room above. Now we were awake, but we couldn’t move – everything hurt, down to the marrow in my bones and inside my veins, especially my wrists (wax on, wax off). Not to mention the near-sunburn. Brian made coffee and we just sat in bed watching TV until noon checkout time. We were loath to even step outside… not for breakfast, not for a lovely morning dip in the pool… quite the opposite of a “romantic hotel getaway”. We just wanted to hole up inside our little cocoon and not move a muscle until we were kicked out. The front desk called at 11:50 to “remind” us to leave. Believe me, I didn’t need reminding. I could have slept another 24 hours.

Waiting…and Waiting… and Waiting
Once booted from the hotel, we were homeless. Our next 2-1/2 hours were spent lingering over a long lunch (with our luggage) at Shots restaurant. In order to spread the love, we moved our butts a block away to Hammerheads (along with our luggage), lounging another 2-1/2hrs over beer and iced tea. At 5pm, our new friend from S/V Leaway arrived and we drove to Guaymas for yet another 2 hour restaurant layover! After dinner, Jim dropped us off at the Tufesa bus station at 7pm (thanks Jim!). Our bus was scheduled for 8:30pm…so we waited some more! Finally, after an entire day of loitering in various locations, we got on the bus and made a run for the border. Another 10 hours and we were back in the good ‘ole USA once again!

After 6 months of play, it’s time for 2 weeks of hard work. I know. We can’t complain… that’s not a bad ratio. This summer we have opted to take Indigo out of the water for the hurricane season. We learned the hard way last year… no one wants to live locked-away in an air-conditioned hovel in the stupid hotness of a San Carlos summer. We could be doing better things with our time. But why leave so early? Hurricane season doesn’t start ‘til June 1st, right? Well, Nov.-April is 6 months, and we didn’t go back home to extend our visas… simple as that.

Hauling Out
Our haul-out date was scheduled for Friday, April 22nd. We have hauled out many times, but we always had a house and a car to ferry back the stuff we were storing (sails, cushions, etc.). We could work at our own pace and then go home to sleep and eat in a serene, uncluttered, civilized space. Since we hadn’t done this before… prepping the boat for haul-out while living on it… we figured we should give ourselves a decent amount of time. Why stress ourselves unnecessarily? But how many days IS enough?

When List-Making Goes Bad
Leaving Puerto Escondido we began our haul-out chore spreadsheet. Day by day we fiddled with it, adding tasks and rearranging and adding some more. Our simple list became not-so-simple, the mountain of growing projects and sub-projects turned into an avalanche of letters, spilling down off the page with ampersands and bullet points running for their lives. Aaaakkkk! Our simple list turned into 4 pages of pre-haul prep. That’s right… FOUR PAGES… the source of imagined ulcers and not-so-imagined nervous ticks. The closer we got to San Carlos, the more fidgety and worrywarty Brian became; even I was getting nervous we couldn’t do it all in two weeks.

15 Days of Prep
From April 7-21st, with only a couple days of playing hooky, we worked every day: sometimes only a couple hours, sometimes 4 hours, sometimes 8. Every day we tried to tackle at least one project. Working this way, we never felt rushed, even on the last day.

Constant Chaos
Living in constant chaos for 2 weeks is not my idea of fun, but it’s necessary. We must LIVE with the things we are storing, like sails and dinghies and kayaks and big bins. Despite the accomplished feeling after completing a task and removing this or that (like solar panels), it still has to go SOMEWHERE. My favorite gripe: our 3ft-sq. solar panels. Their temporary home is on the floor leaning up against the life raft/footstool, constantly in the way. I am forever snagging a corner, initiating countless close-call collapses. Fortunately, it’s not rainy or hot yet here in San Carlos, so we can pile most large items on deck while we labor below. We get good at shuffling objects around. I can’t even count how many times we moved those sail bags!

Living on the boat while prepping requires a specific mindset.
1. Ignore the clutter.
2. Be meticulous about making a list.
3. Pre-determine when to do what. Certain things need to be done before others, and many tasks can only be completed during the last few days. Spread-loading those chores is key. (Good advice in general, but especially on a cramped boat.)

What Prep DO you DO?
Maybe you are wondering…what the heck DO they do to the boat before it gets stored? So I wrote down our progress by the day, including some extra snippets, so we could remember just how long everything took and when we accomplished what… for future reference and to belay your persistent curiosity.

April 7
- Clean main sail (scrub while hoisting it in the slip - requires zero wind, early a.m. is best)
- Watermaker pickle (flushing out seawater from filters)
- Trip to Walmart  w/ S/V Angelina - buy huge cleaning bin (doubles as a liquid storage bin)
- Trip to Construama - buy 4ft of 5” PVC pipe for our experimental cap-rail cover
- Met Dan and Deb from S/V Caper! These guys are famous to us, having hailed originally from our Marina at Camp Pendleton. It took us two years to finally run into them!

April 8
- Clean genoa (scrub while gradually unfurling at the dock, dry)
- Blow up & clean kayak, wipe-on 303 plastic UV protectant (hereafter known as simply 303)
- Give away extra dinghy motor gas (don’t leave fuel jugs filled on deck during summer)

April 9
- Take down genoa, fold on dock (harder than it sounds, the thing is huge)
- Wash staysail, dry, take down, fold (sails are done, yay!)
- Wash lines: jib sheet, staysail sheet, both furler lines, staysail halyard, kayak tether
- Lay out all 300ft of anchor chain, wash, dry, put back into anchor locker
- Wine and snacks with S/V Sea Dancer

April 10
- Dinghy - blow up, scrub, dry, 303, dry, fold into bag; oars – clean/303; dorade vents - clean/303
- Brian climbs the mast to remove blocks & 3 halyards to wash, run temporary lines, wrap deck light
- Clean more lines - 6 dock lines, main halyard, jib halyard, spinnaker halyard (can I be done yet?)

April 11
- Change oil in outboard engine, remove from stern, run in fresh water bucket, add fuel Stabil
- Change oil in generator
- Bimini solar panels - remove, wash, spray Eisenglass protectant, store below
- Lazy day! Exhausted from line cleaning yesterday!

On Washing Lines:
We met our neighbor Shadowfax at Hammerheads today. They asked us: Was that you on B dock washing all those lines all day yesterday? Me: Yes, for two days actually. Them: Ah, we heard about you. Me: Excuse me? Them: You’re making all the women look bad, washing all those lines! Me (laughing): OK, I won’t do it again I promise! Two days of line-washing is as much as anyone needs.
 
FYI: lines, halyards and sheets = ropes. I must have been the talk of the docks; but when lines can stand up on their own, it’s time for a good scrubbing.  I had to wash 6 dock lines (attaching the boat to the dock), 4 halyards (holding up each sail), 3 sheets (controlling the lower portion of each sail), 2 furler lines (to roll up the genoa and staysail), and miscellaneous lashing ropes. All are soaked in a bucket with mild detergent, brush-scrubbed, agitated with my clothes plunger a couple hundred times, then plunged/rinsed another couple hundred times until the water runs clear. Depending on length, from 25 – 80ft, some ropes must be done in two or three sections. Oy, my back!

Why don’t I use a washing machine? Believe it or not, machine washing is a controversial sailing subject. Many people do, but I've read that the wringing motion can cause the inner core to poke through the outer sleeve; even if this doesn’t happen, the twisting motion could degrade strength. Since our lines are very expensive, we won’t take the chance… so I AM the machine!

April 12
- Clean entire cockpit, wash bimini & dodger canvas
- Polish cockpit stainless: wheel/binnacle, back rails, monitor & fin, winches, radar
- Wipe 303 on plastic bits: winch grips, wheel, monitor knobs, antennae, radar dome, chartplotter
- Cover winches with fabric (others use aluminum foil to protect items from sun damage, but we are trying this breathable, reusable fabric that our friends on S/V Cuba Libre told us about)

April 13
- Dodger & bimini – spray w/Fabric Guard (retains water-repellency)
- Polish more stainless: all stanchions up to the bow pulpit, ladder, boom vang, granny bars
- Take laundry to hotel - 2 loads is $161 pesos/$10 (I’ve had enough hand-washing lines!)
- Cleaned out about 1/2 of my food bins

April 14
- Wash top deck, side decks & bow
- Acetoned spots of tape residue left by teak painters
- Polished more stainless: bow pulpit, anchor windlass, cleats, anchor holder, jib & staysail furler
- Fiberglass polish - top deck & sidewalls (smooth fiberglass surfaces of the deck, avoiding non-skid)
- Picked up laundry
- Food giveaway – usable items offered to nearby boaters like sugar, coffee, etc.

April 15
- Fiberglass polish – entire cockpit
- Cleaned out food storage cupboards & bins w/ bleach
- Decided what to keep to eat for next week, made a donation food bag
- Finished fabric-wrapping exterior items: winches, grabrail, roller furlers, misc.
- Vacuumed / mopped floor, shook out carpets & fridge pad, set in sun to air

April 16
- Bathroom day: completely clean toilet, bleached floor pan, counter & other bits, polished stainless. (Half a day’s work)
- Wrapped main sail (our mainsail has non-removable battens, so storing it below is pretty much impossible since it’s an unbendable 15ft-long massive hot dog)

April 17
- Change engine oil
- Finish putting the “head” back together (sailor’s-speak for “bathroom). The head is now off-limits – to the marina we go!
- Tired. No more work today.

April 18
- Cover our newly varnished cap-rail - cut fabric into strips, cut PVC into over 30 pieces, run lines, place fabric & tie to boat (this took all day, but mostly because we hadn’t done it before)
- Clean fridge - give away perishables (mustard, mayo, etc.), defrost, bleach interior, dry overnight
- Start packing bags for our trip home

April 19
- Put dried fridge components back together
- Verify haul-out time w/ marina office
- Talk to/hire maintenance guy - $25/mo to check/fill batteries, unclog cockpit drains, check bilge, re-secure tarps, look for bugs/rodents. (They also take my food donation items to a nearby orphanage - win/win!)
- Remove bed linens, take to laundry
- Clean stove with stainless polish

April 20
- Wash sink & clean drains w/ baking soda, hot water & vinegar
- Picked up laundry
- Washed hull
- Trip to Guaymas w/ Jim from S/V Leaway to pre-purchase bus tickets for Saturday then a wonderful dinner at his home overlooking the ocean

April 21 – Final Day! Now it gets real…
- Take down bimini & dodger canvas, polish stainless underneath canvas
- Finished up fabric coverings: teak, windmeter/AIS
- Fill gigantic storage bin with all-things liquid (we’ve heard horror stories of oil jugs bursting in the severe summer heat, even LED wax candles can melt – don’t want to come home to a surprise mess)
- Add water & chlorine to tanks: 10 gallons each, no more using water on the boat
- Stuff V-Berth: fridge insulator pad, bimini & side solar panels, bimini & dodger canvas, cockpit cushions, pillows. Blankets/quilt stored in plastic bags.
- Dinner with S/V Leaway at Soggy Peso

You Mean There’s MORE?
Lots of projects were on-going processes, like: cleaning out every single food storage bin after using up contents; relocating items to a spot less likely to get overheated (for instance, my Kindle moved from its spot against the hull into my clothes closet); deciding what to throw away or keep food-wise and where to store it. And then there’s countless minor to-do’s… mundane chores, like washing the wastebasket.

No Fuss, No Muss
We are so glad we gave ourselves over two weeks to get everything finished. Having done it once now, we could reasonably accomplish our lengthy list in 9-10 days without any stress. But, everyone’s boats, and therefore task lists, are different. I spoke with a liveaboard couple who routinely preps at the dock in only 1-2 days before hauling. Impossible. Yet another couple goes right from anchoring directly into the boatyard, I assume finishing everything while living on the boat in the yard. No marina days? Inconceivable! Their lists are obviously severely abridged. With so many things to think about and prepare (and so much dock water required for cleaning!), if we tried that, only one of us would be coming back to the States!

The Last Night
That final night we slept on the side sea-berths. Our comfy V-berth was filled to the brim. The kitchen was closed for business. The bathroom, blocked shut by a sail bag. The floor and cockpit, piled high since we needed some sliver of space to sleep. Finished with our mountain of chores and imprisoned in our respective sea-berth-coffins… we iPadded in place for the rest of the evening.

April 22nd: Haul-out Day!
To be continued…