From the category archives:
This weekend Mariola attended the 24th Annual Morgan Invasion at The St. Pete Yacht Club at Pass-A-Grille. It was a decent event with about 14 boats turning out. The Saturday race began about 11:00 and Mariola finished sometime around 3:00. Winds were from the south and very light in the a.m. [click to read more…]
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This title kinda sounds like some sort of fetish movie – which if it was, would probably earn me a lot more dinero. Actually it’s just overdue maintenance on Mariola, the PyratSail Morgan 321. After a little bit of price quoting, I chose Salt Creek Marina for my haulout and bottomjob. They quoted a fair price ($32.50/foot all included), are a do-it-yourself yard and most importantly, close to home. I’ve been through the haulout process before and there’s a lot of back-and-forthing during the week to fix those minor things you normally can’t get at. One of them is waxing the topsides.
Shaving, mowing the grass, trimming bushes – these are all things that I HATE. They are time consuming, the results are temporary and you have to repeat them after a very short time. I want anything I spend time on to last for as long as possible. This sent me on the search for the ultimate boat wax. What I learned, I think, is that any good wax has high quality carnuba and some fancy synthetic polymers in it. I was pretty much settled on 3M paste wax when I walked into West Marine, but the helpful sales lady said that Trewax is the best, and she used to wax boats for a living. I picked up two cans, checked out and headed down to the boat with Cannonball.
Armed with TWO brand new polisher/buffers from Harbor Freight Tools, Cannonball and I figure we’ll have this job knocked out in a couple hours. A little note on Harbor Freight. They have tons of cheap tools at great prices. If you find something on sale on their website, print it out and bring it in. The store doesn’t keep track of the online sale prices and only honors them with a print out. They did go in the back room and make a print out for me since I didn’t know the policy until I got there and stared at them like they were insane “…but it’s YOUR website…” Back to polishing – I got two because they were on sale for $29.00 ea. which made me think we could cut our time in half by each working on one side. The plan worked and the two of us got the boat washed and waxed in about 3 hours. One trick with the Trewax. Instructions say to let the wax dry to a white haze. Don’t let it dry too long. As soon as it starts to haze, start buffing. If you wait too long in the sun the wax turns to a white cement. Really hard to buff off.
A word about the buffers – they fall off the tops of the ladders very easily. I broke mine. The plastic pad backer cracked minutes into the jog. Luckily it held out and didn’t seem to effect anything.
Salt Creek Marina boat yard is great. There’s another yard right next door called Salt Creek Boat Works. It’s very confusing, the Marina was originally owned by the owner of the Works, and the manager of the Works now works at the Marina…blah blah. One thing pointed out to me by a friend was that the Works offers a BoatUS discount, the Marina doesn’t. I think the price given to me by the Marina was fare so I’m not too worried about missing out on the discount – at least I don’t want to know what it would have been…
Overall, a great experience and everybody at the yard was very friendly. Someone even stopped by to give away extra expoxy they had mixed. It worked perfect to fill some gouges on the bow. Mariola is now shined up and the bottom is barnacle-free. Getting ready for some big excursions. More on that to come….
Here’s an exciting video of the waxing.
Salt Creek Marina, Manager: Jim Bradford 727-895-4481
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