We got a jump-start on our sailing adventure (T-minus two weeks and counting!) by sanding down the all the wood on the boat.
Yeah, can you believe it? The charter company requires that you sand down the boat, slap another coat of varnish on it, and step the mast (that means raise the mast) yourself before they’ll let you sail off into the Caribbean blue!
Just kidding. Saturday did involve some boat-related manual labor and elbow grease. Two-thirds of our crew gathered in a warehouse along the south branch of the Chicago River to begin the spring ritual of preparing the boat for another summer on the Lake Michigan. The first task was sanding down the wood.
This was the first year the boat was in this particular warehouse and they really had the boats packed in there. Most of them are power boats and even the smallest of them looks hulking when it’s pulled up out of the water and hoisted up on blocks and wooden cradles. Up until a year ago, the boat I sail on wintered wrapped in plastic at an outdoor shipyard in Waukegan. That meant any pre-season work was subject to weather and there were many days when the wind made clean up a mighty chilly task.
This year, though the warehouse was a tad cold, it wasn’t bad once you started moving around and working hard. Plus, we were out of the wind and pending rain/sleet/snow storm that descended on Chicago later that night. It was fairly dark, so we had lots of work lights hanging about. Next time, I’ll remember to bring my head lamp.
This was the first year I wasn’t too freaked out about scrambling around on the deck of a boat suspended on a frame of metal, wood and cinder blocks twelve feet off the concrete. It takes some getting used to feeling that by standing on the boat, it won’t come tumbling down. And getting on and off by climbing up a tall metal ladder to hoist yourself over the lines running along the deck is not for the faint of heights.
