I just noticed that the last post we did was almost a month ago! We've been busy working on the boat, hiding from Hurricane Kay (mostly a non-event), moving to new Airbnbs, and visiting family and friends in Tucson.
It is late September now and it is starting to cool off, relatively speaking of course. It's still plenty hot here with the daytime temperatures in the 90s. When we last posted, we had just finished an unexpectedly long trip to Tucson while Call Lily was having her bottom sandblasted to remove years and layers of paint. As it turned out, we still couldn't get to work on her because she hadn't been moved back to her parking place and we had to wait many long days until we could get back to work.
The first order of business was to get the beach off the decks. Sandblasting is literally just pumping sand and air through a hose and the sand goes everywhere. We had up to an inch of sand in spots on the deck. Sand made its way up the sink drains into the sinks even. I think we emptied the shop vac 3 times on that job.
Around this time, the yard and the cruisers internet were abuzz with talk about Hurricane Kay which was spinning up along the south coast of Mexico where we had been just a few months ago. Weather prediction models are pretty good for 1-3 days out, but due to all the variables in the models, they are really just really fancy guesses from 4-10 days out. Some of the models showed the storm coming right up the Gulf of California toward us in Puerto Peñasco. Regardless, we all set about preparing for the worst. This meant removing everything that might flap into shreds or be blown off the decks. We took down our sun shade that covers the entire deck, lowered Millie, our dinghy, to the floor and lashed her to the jack stands underneath Calla Lily and stashing all our tools and cushions down below. We also lashed the Genoa (the sail in the front) to its fuller to make sure it didn't unroll. Rain and possible storm surge from the bay were also concerns, so we had the yard workers come and check the jack stands in case the ground got soft. Then we high-tailed it to Tucson and spent the weekend with friends and family and avoided the mess that comes with every big storm in Puerto Peñasco.
Fortunately Hurricane Kay spared us and went west. They got winds in the 30 knot range and a lot of rain and a small bit of the yard flooded, but that was pretty much it. The yard manager was very communicative and posted pictures to calm the nerves of the nervous boat owners all weekend.
We didn't fare as well as we suffered the side effects of our fourth Moderna covid vaccinations. We got the shots at 11:00AM and by 9:00PM we both felt pretty crappy and spent all day the following day recovering. Fortunately, we felt better in time for a dinner party that night.
When we got back to Puerto Peñasco on Sunday, we had 3 quick and long days of sanding the old sand-infused non-skid paint off Call Lily's 400 square feet of topside decks. It way hot nasty work with 36 grit sanding pads and mean nasty angle grinders. When we do work like this, we wear plastic jumpsuits like crime scenes investigators. And we sweat. A lot.
We had another quick trip to Tucson last weekend to do some housesitting, see our oldest son, and pick up more boat project supplies. This week is sanding, sanding, and more sanding.
