05 April 2022

The hull blasting project: preparation, waiting, and Day 1

Hopefully this is the last major project that we undertake on Nahani. Not that we are actually doing much of this one apart from emptying our bank accounts, but it still occupies our time.

We are in Melbourne in early March as we both have commitments in late Feb/early March. We arrive back in Hobart on Sunday 13 March, hoping that we will be starting the hull blasting project in the following week. We have a couple of days of preparation - taking things off the deck, removing the dinghy etc and taking clothes and other gear to the Blichfeldts, where we plan to stay while the boat is out of the water.

We are due at the Cleanlift on Wednesday. That morning we decide to drive the car up to Prince of Wales Bay for a look at where we have to bring the boat in, intending to leave it there and return by taxi to the marina to get the boat. We chat to Glen at the Cleanlift, then call a cab and we're about to jump in when we get a call from Stuart (Abrasive Cleaning & Blasting) to say that the weather forecast is for we weather, and we'll have to cancel. We send the cab away and return in the car. It's annoying, but it would have been much worse if we'd been half way up the river when we got the call. 

The next possible start date is 6 April. We rebook and we then have two weeks of waiting, watching the weather, hoping that by some miracle it will improve and we will be able to start earlier. But it doesn't and we just potter about doing other maintenance jobs. The weather is intermittently wet, which is some consolation, and as we get into April the forecast for the period starting on 6 April looks very promising.

On Monday we contact the Cleanlift again, and get agreement that we can bring the boat up and have it lifted out on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday is the Captain's birthday, which makes a nice present for him. And we have time to repeat some of the exercises of a fortnight previously, packing up clothes and gear, removing dinghy and kayaks. We're all done in comfortable time to take the boat out of the pen around midday, but have a lot of difficulty getting out of the pen in a quite strong southerly. As soon as we release our lines, we blow across the pen towards Eclipse. But on the third try, we get out safely and head up through the Tasman Bridge to Prince of Wales Bay, the first time we've been this far upriver. We slot Nahani into the cleanlift dock without an drama and watch with some amazement as she's lifted out of the water with slings, then trundled across for a washdown.





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