Good to be back on the water! This trip began Thursday with a trip to Skyline Marine Center for a “haul & hang.” This is a short (1 hour or so) haul-out for pressure washing and scraping of the keel and running gear.

We got to our dock and had plenty of time to load, organize, and eat some lunch before heading over to the lift at Skyline Marine. Here are some photos and video of Touch of Gray coming out of the water:

We haven’t had this boat out of the water before so we were expecting to see some “hitchhikers” as our son would say. And we were correct, lots of growth.

It wasn’t too bad though, and looked great after pressure washing. It will need bottom paint soon.

This was also an opportunity for Nick to change the anodes. This didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped, as the bow thruster anodes were really stuck on there. With a couple of loner tools and a lot of chipping away, he finally got them off and the replacements secured. The stern zinc was much easier.

The collar zinc on the rudder is almost gone but we got the wrong size and that one will have to wait.

The other big accomplishment was getting the bow thruster working. When we pulled into our dock last time, the thruster wasn’t working. As soon as the boat was out of the water, an employee told us there was a piece of netting caught in there. While not good, it was better than other things that could have been wrong. Nick was able to pull it out, and it now works fine.

Even though we didn’t get finished until about 4pm, we decided to head out rather than go back to our dock for the night. We thought we were heading to Fisherman Bay to anchor, but it had starting raining so we changed course and headed for the dock at Friday Harbor.

Coincidentally, our good friends Tracey & Steve are on SJI taking care of Kit’s house while she’s traveling, so we’ll meet them for breakfast in town. We’ll spend the rest of the morning giving ToG a much-needed bath, then head to Garrison Bay to soak for a few days.