When we are full water, full fuel and full provisions we ride a little lower in the waterline and the area of the hull that isn’t protected by special paint is underwater. As we eat, drink and be merry, the boat gets lighter and we go back to our painted waterline.
survived thrived by staying wet with the splashes from wavelets.
We hired a diver for the first time to clean our entire bottom. Carol had done some cleaning of the prop and bottom free diving and even changed one of our zincs. It is an exhausting job and we were delighted to pay someone $1/foot to roll out their full barnacle killing, gentle hull cleaning accoutrement.
La Paz is known for whale sharks. Giant, gentle beasts that feed on tiny shrimps. Those tiny shrimps are what is coating the diver in these photos. We can hear them all throughout the night through our hull making little clicking sounds.
Our prop is now running without cavitations and we gained at least a knot of speed under power and probably half of that under sail from having a clean hull.
another reason to hire a diver there...the icky creepy feeling of getting those shrimp in your ears! it's the tiny little crabs that like all the bottom growth too...one literally jumped out of a friends ear when he was doing the post-clean dropper dose of vinegar and alcohol into his ear. now, *that* was shocking!
ReplyDeleteIs your printing still on the keel? I suspect the diver got a kick out of it.
ReplyDeleteEw! Crabs in the ear!
ReplyDeleteAs of one month ago we could still read Southbound :)