Hello all!

The last two months have kept us very busy. We'd two major boat maintence tasks to perform. The first was a new coat of bottom paint. Orca's 30-month-old coating had lost much of its effective toxicity; long strands of growth were looking comfortable on her hull. The second was to replace the cables which hold up the mast. This job is supposed to be done every 10 years, but our suspicions were that Orca's rigging was probably twice that age.

We pulled into the slipway and the yard boys tossed us lines. A strap went around the mast and up to a crane, we detached all the rigging and pop, off came the mast. We loaded the mast onto a stretch trailer and sent it off to the rigger's shop. Then a pair of weighted straps were lowered under the keel. With the roar of powerful diesel engines, a cloud of black smoke, and the whine of hydraulic pumps, Orca was lifted from the water.

The yard manager was apologetic when he informed us that the only space availiable was adjacent to the freeway. We soon discovered a charming sequence of events as each semi-truck went roaring by. First, a low vibration would rush along the ground into the boat, giving us just a bit of warning before Orca would shudder in her cradle, reeling from the pressure wave. Hot exhaust fumes swirled by in a momentary blizzard. It was great incentive to get on with the job and get back in the water.

The usual course of events for re-antifouling a hull is to wet-sand the old and slap on the new coat of paint. Unfortunately, we found that somewhere, back down in the geology of Orca's onion-skin paint buildup, one layer of paint was not adhering to the previous layer, bring the whole stack off in chips and flakes. We decided to do the job properly and scrape the hull back to factory conditon—unpainted gelcoat—and start over. And thus began 10 days of intense physical labor, first with carbide scrapers, then with 36-grit disc sanders. We ground through two dozen layers of antifoul paint, and discovered the signature Cape Dory factory blue about a quarter inch down. Signature Blue dust was resistant to even the most vigorous scrubbing and we lived like Smurfs for a week. The work was particularly distasteful for Kara, who'd been raised with BPA-free waterbottles and organic produce, because we finished each day covered head-to-toe in intensely toxic waste. Drinking beer with the boys in the yard, they would nod sagely at our skin tone. Carefull, they'd say. Make sure you cover up. Last two times I scraped back, I ended up in hospital with copper poisoning...

Arguably, it was all worth it as we rolled the first beautiful coats of new paint onto Orca's immaculate egg-shell hull. We buffed and waxed to a high sheen above the waterline, and had a new vynl name and hailing port printed up for the transom. We also spent several days working on the mast, completely dissasembling the entire structure. After checking each bolt, replacing many, we reassembled and attached the new wires the rigger had prepared for us. After three weeks on the hard, we splashed on a Friday morning, re-stepped the mast, topped up on fuel, reattached the boom, ran up the sails, and escaped up the coast to Whangamata. Just in time too; Kara had booked a visit back to the States and was due to fly out the next day.

Dropping Signature-Blue-Kara off at the airport, she was clearly in need of at least a month of recovery. I rated my chances of ever getting her back near those for getting struck by lightening.

During the lonely weeks that followed, long-lost Uncle Dave and family opened their house and lives to me. Soon, I was tagging along to work with U.D, where we discovered a mutual love of coffee. Somehow, it never ceased to amaze U.D when we wouldn't arrive at the job site until 2pm. But we only stopped for coffee four times! he'd lament. One particular job-site was a high-roller corporate headquarters with a fully equipped kitchen, sporting a top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art expresso machine which necessitated frequent, lengthy coffee breaks. With caffeen roaring in my ears and hands trembling, I could barely raise the fifth double hazelnut/carmel mochachino to my lips.

Heading into May, the start of the southern winter, the temperature began to drop—more hot coffee was not the answer. I phoned up Kara and put in an order for a diesel heater for Orca. Amazingly, at the end of May, not only did Kara return, but she was toting two massive boxes filled with a heater and all our favorite goodies from back home. We spent three days installing the heater, gritting our teeth as we spun up a 5-inch hole saw to cut through Orca's deck.

As we send this off, Orca is in the best condition she's been in since she left the factory floor 33 years ago. We're not sure where we want to take her next, but we find that there huge freedom in knowing she's once again capable of crossing any ocean on the planet.