November 8, 2006 - RETURN TO THE BOAT
by Al & Beth Liggett

Early this year I wrote a report for SetSail about preparing the boat to leave for many months while we traveled to, and within, the United States. We were gone seven months. We had an absolutely fabulous time! But now it is good to be home again.

Black dodger. We stepped aboard to find our dodger BLACK with mold!

If you check the Post Script at the end of that report you'll find three problems that I was really concerned about:
1) The roller furler bearings in the lower unit had totally frozen
2) We had to leave the brand new awning up as cover, and
3) We had to leave the dodger in place as well.

The first item couldn't have happened at a better time - we simply took the bearing piece back to the States with us and had new bearings installed.

Inside the awning (this is a brand new awning): the mold on the underside was awful, but not half as bad as the top of the awning.

As for the awning and dodger - what a disaster! The mold and mildew had taken over. The dodger was a disgusting black. I mean BLACK! It was black inside and out - you couldn't even see through the windows! It was awful...A small cover in the cockpit, but under the main awning was black with mold too. Yet the white cover on the pedestal, and the two white winch covers under the dodger were better than they would have been had we been aboard for those seven months.

Cleaning the dodger. The two of us worked all one morning to clean the inside and outside of the grossly black dodger from its mold.

The main awning, as I feared, was mold-spotted inside and out, and had the usual complement of black rain streaks down the flaps. The sacrificial awning shielding the whole foredeck was surprisingly still holding its own with just two small tears. It is an old mainsail - the dacron was green with algae in a few places, but certainly not moldy. Underneath was our usual foredeck awning - no mold.

Dirty deck. Fortunately, the deck was only bad with mold and dirt in a few places like this. They are our high traffic areas, or where Al cleans fish, I do laundry, etc.

In the places where there was no awning or cover over the deck, it was moldy. The foredeck by the anchor windlass was black. The mooring lines were black. On the deck between front awning and main awning it was grossly spotted with mold and algae - more on one side than the other. The ventilation hoods were gross with mold and totally degraded on the very top. Even the dorade hood under the main awning was slightly degraded. The lifelines were all black and grungy. All the varnished teak was moldy too. What a MESS!

Mold on the teak - all the exterior teak looked like this. I had varnished all this in January. It did clean off quite well.

Inside - yukkkk! Mildew all over the place. (What's the difference between mildew and mold?) We started cleaning. We did this for a couple of days - both inside and out! It has rained every afternoon since arrival. A HUGE downpour on the second afternoon really helped with cleaning up outside. Late Saturday afternoon we took a break - it was raining again - and unpacked the luggage! Three days after arrival! I only had unpacked our backpacks and the toiletries on arrival.

With each drawer and cupboard we opened we found more things moldy...and rusty...and corroded...and wetted out - like the table salt. Even the pepper was coagulated! Opened a bottle of red wine last night - it had gone to vinegar. Things like that. The mold we can clean - this project is ongoing as we speak - the salt and other stuff we can replace.

The absolute WORST ruination is one of our clocks. It is a brass clock and sits between our striking clock and the barometer up on the bulkhead. We've had it on the boat for 30 years; it runs on a C battery. The battery had failed and leaked and the whole clock is ruined. Now, we have left the boat plenty of times for this long, and I don't ever remember taking the battery out of the clock. Batteries in all the flashlights aboard were just fine - if a bit diminished in brightness.

There are two dorades on the deck; they both looked like this. The one dorade on the cabin top fared only a little better. I suppose we should have removed them - but preferred the ventilation.

We've NEVER had the boat suffer so much during an absence. Maybe blowing the air in wasn't a good idea after all. At least during the wet season. The fans installed in the hatches were still mindlessly blowing the air in/out. So the solar panels had been doing their thing and the controller had let everything have a charge without problems. The batteries showed a 12.61 charge, so that was one positive note.

Mildew, bed area. Then again, the ventilation did nothing to stop mildew from covering interior surfaces like this around our bed.

On the brighter side, the engine started after a few cranks, the fridge system is working well, the outboard is running, the head works just fine. Had to bang on the check valve in the water line for the galley pump to get it freed up and pumping again.

The hull was dirty as we expected, but it cleaned off with just soap and water. The waterline (blue) is clean too; we had purposely left our tanks quite empty so the blue would be above the water. The bottom is fuzzy-scuzzy. Al says it wipes down with just your hand quite easily. The black plastic bag is still around the prop, so who knows what the unveiling will reveal.

Corroded clock - disaster caused by leaking battery.

We are tentatively planning another trip to the States for next year. We are not sure what we should do to prepare the boat next time. A marina and a dehumidifier? Someone to come and clean once a month? Anybody got an idea?

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