Aleria's Adventures

  While Alex taped the boot stripe, moved the supports and finished painting the remaining spots on the bottom, I scraped the varnish. There is not much left. I am going to try to remove the rest and treat the wood with mold killer as I believe that was what caused the problems to begin with.  We washed scum off the after deck and the cockpit, but were too exhausted to finish the forward section of deck and the hull. That we can do after launching anyway. At least now she is ready to drop in. Still have to clean the prop.  And I am now fully vaccinated. Yippee!

  After a year and a half of not being allowed to travel out of Mayo, most of which was no more than 5 km from home, we were allowed to go to Aleria in Kilrush on the Shannon River. We expected the worst. What was there was not nearly as bad in some ways, but awful in others.  Yes, she is dirty and we need to clean her up, but there was no mould below. Yahoo! The dehumidifier worked. The brightwork took a beating so I will be stripping it down, which it needed anyway. The first day we managed to get half the bottom sanded and painted. On day 2, we sanded and painted the other half except for the top along the boot stripe. That we plan to do tomorrow.  I think we got lucky in that we had taken everything off so there was excellent air circulation below and nothing to rot. People we know had to discard so many things after leaving a boat for that long. They need TLC. So back to Kilrush tomorrow. Let's see if we can get her home. It's been way too long.  Our nephew, Cor...