Haul-Out in the East Bay

On the way to Berkeley

Before

After

Aloha from the Berkeley Marine Center, where the Libertatia sits back in the water at the gas dock. The last few weeks have been busy as we worked everyday to rejuvenate the old gal after nearly 17 months of living aboard and over 5,000 miles at sea. We are all a little worn from our blast of work on the hard and boatyard living but we are quite pleased with the result of our efforts. The remain a multitude of above-the-water projects to address now that we are back afloat but below the waterline we did quite well.

The old look

The new look

As you can see from the pictures, the most striking change to the boat is the topside color. Although we loved our original black paint job, the Pettit polyurethane paint that we so very carefully applied a year and half ago was just blistering off because of the heat generated by the dark color. In places on the hull in the shade of the boomkin or the toerails, the paint was still in great condtition and it was obvious that the hot color was the issue. We spent a few days sanding off the remaining black paint, with great difficulty in some places, and decided on a cream color to replace it. Aside from the hull, we are going to stick with the same color scheme and hope to touch up everything (toe rails, rub, rails, cabin, trim, and spars) in the coming days. Even though we have been extraordinarily lucky when it come to the unseasonably great weather we've had while in Berkeley, it's still been difficult to find nice windows in which to paint. Between foggy mornings, dew, cold temperatures and early sunsets it's been a trick to apply paint and get it to skin over before the moisture settles in the afternoon. Despite the difficulty, we've been careful and have been generally successful in getting the paint to look good.

Seaworm damage

When we pulled here out we were pleasantly surprised to find no big surprises below the waterline. We knew of most all of the issues as we dove on the boat extensively while still in the warm waters of Hawaii. The one small surprise, however, was teredo worm damage on the leading edge of the rudder. While in Seattle we constructed a replacement for the old oak rudder, which was badly warped, and it was a bit of a shock to see the first inch of the year-old sapele wood riddled with small holes and tunnels. Of all the things that we had read about when it comes to operating and maintaining a wooden boat, seaworms were definitely the scariest and most mysterious of the issues that we had yet to encounter and it was actually kind of cool to get some experience dealing with the little buggers. Our fix consisted of carving out and opening up as much of the tunneled area as we could, filling with penetrating and then thickened epoxy, and finally covering the entire rudder with a thin layer of thickened epoxy in hopes of keeping out the worms in the future. This is definitely an area we will keep an eye on as time goes by...


Aside from the rudder, our other under-the-water projects included a few small spots on the deadwoods where we excised some punky wood and replaced it with new graving pieces, a fill and a scarf on the sternpost where our former boomkin bobstay chainplate had ripped out (it was lagged in, unfortunately, to avoid the rudder post), the move of the two remain boomkin bobstay chainplates to provide a better angle of support for the boomkin, and the replacement of the old cutlass bearing. 

Of anything during the haul-out, we spent the most time prepping and painting the bottom. We removed the remaining ablative paint with the yard's vaccuum sanders and scraped off the pooched-out seam sealer that had squeezed out a touch as the planks swelled up. Before painting the old cast iron keel we put a lot of energy into cleaning the metal with a pneumatic "needler," hitting it with a wire cup on an angle grinder, and wiping it down before applying two coats of a Rustlok primer and the bottom paint. We were very generously given over five gallons of Trinidad hard anti-fouling paint which we applied before slopping on the ablative paint we had purchased for the job. In Hawaii we had been frustrated by the bottom job we had and it will be exciting to see how our careful prep and paint holds up in the coming years. 

Aside from the paint it was very cool to see how well the boat has held up since we launched her in July of 2010: a testament to the quality of materials and craftsmanship that went into her when she was built. There is no doubt that many people have given her a lot of love over the years and really it's not much of surprise that she remains pretty sound for yet another year.

Our experience in the yard in Berkeley has been great. Cree and the team have been very good to us and it's been a real pleasure to be here. It's been nice to be in a yard with other do-it-yourselfers as well as watching the pros at work. One of the highlights for all of us has been watching Steve Hutchison doing a number of extensive repairs to a couple of old wooden fishboats. I think that we've always been intimidated by the prospect of larger repairs but to see guys blazing through serious projects gives us a new perspective. Hopefully we'll never have to do them though...

As usual, our time in the yard was brightened by many friends, old and new, who came to visit, help-out, serenade us, or just to hang out. We definitely couldn't have accomplished what we did with such ease or in the time we spent out of the water without the encouragement and hard work of a number of people. Although our boat-yard scene was still a far cry from the wildness of our time in South Park, it was fun to be back camping in the yard and reminiscing about our restoration. Although living in a boatyard is not what we want to do, it sure can be fun in small doses. When we were ready for a break all we had to do was walk out of the yard and we were in Cesar Chavez Park, looking out across the bay at the city and the golden gate to the west.

Now that we are back in the water we are shifting gears out of full-on work mode. After a break for the holidays, we hope to settle into a routine of chipping away at our project list, working and saving money, planning our coming adventures aboard the Libertatia, and having a lot of fun! Happy Holidays to all of you who are reading this and thanks for your interest and support. Our big thanks go out to everyone who helped out on the boat or given us materials this time around. We couldn't do it without you. Feel free to contact us and until next time...


For more pictures of our haul out click here