Hello boat

It’s November 6th – Election Day in the USA and we’re back in Florida working on Crimson Kathryn. It’s been over 15 months since the boat was hauled out and placed on the hard and we have a lot of work to do in the next 2 weeks. Launch date is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 15!!

Over the winter and summer, our main mast was infested with bees. Mark came down in February and June this year and noticed the “wasps” buzzing around but unfortunately the yard believed the summer heat would drive these pesky bugs away. Well they were wrong!! The pesky bugs were (are) bees and they have built a terribly large hive at the top of our main mast (inside of course). So, job #1 – get rid of the bees. To do that, our main mast had to be pulled and a bee keeper was called in. The bee keeper removed the main bees but that didn’t get rid of the nest. Mark and I noticed immediately on our first day here that the top of the mast was buzzing with bees. The bee guy was back today and spent 3 hours power washing the top of the mast (with some help from Mark). We’re hopeful that the hive has been destroyed and the bees will leave!

Next up – replace all the rigging on the boat (now that’s a big job when you have 2 masts). Mark has been working hard to remove all of the chain plates (metal fittings that connect the wire stays to the deck of the boat) because new ones need to be created using the old ones as templates. We will be picking up all the cables and fitting for our new rigging on Thursday.

My main job is to clean up the boat. We have a fair bit of mold everywhere because the boat has been closed up for so long. But the main mess is bee poop and dead bees!!!! Yes, the interior of our boat is littered with dead bees and poop (which looks like yellow spots and drips). It’s pretty awful, but easy to clean!

Our plan so far is to work on the boat in Florida until mid December. Once the boat is launched, we’ll be moving to Burnt Store Marina (not far away – further south and closer to Fort Myers) where we will continue to fix things up. We’ll return home for Christmas and then head back to the boat in early January. After that, it’s time to head back to the Bahamas. That’s the plan!