Scrubber

 I did have a nice little blog post written telling you all about my scrubbing experience. but then it was lost in one deft stroke of pure unluck as my phone containing all of said nuggets of pixel based joy landed nose down in a very small puddle of salt water. They do say it only takes an inch to drown in, well it would seem that my Samsung Galaxy S3 needed only 15mm to kill it.

My previous wrestle with a wetsuit for water line scrubbing revealed to me that I really needed to get the boat out of the water for a proper bottom scrub. There's several options for this,
 

A full lift out with a crane, scrub and then put back in, £250

A sealift, which is this marvellous floating submersible hoist thingy based in Haslar marina £140 on a summer special offer

If I had the choice, I would have chosen sealift, it would have all been done in just 2 hours.

or scrubbing posts at a local sailing club called Hardway, £10 plus jet wash power tokens and most of a day.

Given my current "strappedforcash" status, I'm on a very tight budget. So scrubbing posts it was.

Malcolm, the handiest man around Haslar Marina furnished me with roller handles, a third of a tin of hard wearing antifoul and even drove over to the local sailing club to give me a hand getting onto the posts.

I needed a few other things in my favour

• Big tides :  check
• light winds :  check
• warm weather : check
• no rain :  mostly check

The tide times were just right to pull alongside the posts mid day on the last bit of the rising tide, get the boat positioned and then tweak and adjust as the tide fell. The small amount of breeze was blowing me on to the posts and it was all incredibly easy and civilised. 

As the tide dropped and revealed my keel for the first time since mid May when I was out for the steering seizure I was quite surprised how little weed there was. 

But on closer inspection with a high pressure jetwash nozzle, it was apparent that the barnacles had made a decent sized housing estate on my keel. 

It was then a race against time, jet washing and scrubbing to a point where I could put a quick coat of antifoul on before the tide came rushing back to float us away again. 

I was extremely lucky to have the help of Hardway club member and all round thoroughly nice chap Chris Waters. Without his help I doubt if I would have managed to get all the antifoul on before the tide came back.

I didn't have time to stand back and admire our joint efforts, I was whisked away to the club house where a lively evening of post race socialising was going on and the put on a fantastic menu of really good club food.
No one minded my black paint splattered face or hands. Nor did they mind the ships dog dining with us.

Hardway sailing club seems to be a very sociable club indeed.

After a little post meal nap, I was up at mid night to await the last bit of tidal height to lift me off the bottom.
Chris came back to help again and even jumped onboard Boogie Nights for the short motor back down Portsmouth harbour to Haslar and helped with mooring.

 Now I'm eager to see what difference that clean bottom will have to the boats performance.