What’s under all that sea growth?!

Sea growth and how does it form so fast?

Sea growth is part of owning a boat and life in a marina. When our neighbor moved in next door, I couldn’t help to notice how much growth he had on the bottom of his boat. His boat is aluminum, so honestly I don’t know if aluminum boats have anti-fouling paint on the bottom.  Our boat, was recently painted so that was not really a concern of ours. However, it also has never sat in salt water for any extended period of time.

Back to sea growth! As Scott was working on changing the oil last weekend, I noticed that the dinghy had water in it. Great – now how to get rid of that?!

Well, my brainy idea (which worked) was to use our Bilge Sponge to remove the water. They soak up a lot of water and work great. The only issue was the water was so stagnant, that even after washing my hands five times, I still stunk! Next time I will use gloves.  Scott and I have also thought about getting a small hand pump to remove the water. We’ll let you know what works best.

Is that our propeller??

As I was leaning over the swim platform to clean out the water, I noticed our propeller! Yikes!! In fact, it freaked me out so bad, I immediately sent out a posts on Facebook, asking everyone what to do.

Here’s what the other one looked like!

Some of the comments I got on Facebook were:

• “Run around in the bay”
• “Go in reverse really fast”
• “Get a wire brush and try to clean it”
• “Haul it out and scrub it”
• “Does your boat have anti-fouling paint?”

It got pretty comical. Just so you know, anti-fouling paint has nothing to do with your propellers. My brother-in-law did think it was odd to have that much growth on them though, but then again, we hadn’t taken the boat out in over five weeks. Then I walked around the marina and looked at other boats. They were exactly the same way. Perhaps Elliott Bay Marina is really fertile? LOL. Determined to tackle it, I decided to get our regular Boat Brush with Long Handle out and see if I could reach the propellers.

Sure enough, the stuff came right off.  That’s the good news. The bad news is, I realized that our port side prop was bent. This would explain why we had troubles getting going on our way to Kingston. What we don’t know, is how it happened?  When we left for Kingston, our bow line got loose and was under the boat the entire trip (30 min). But the line was unscathed. Could it have bent the prop when it first got loose?  It’s amazing really that we didn’t experience too much trouble considering we went to Gig Harbor and also through The Locks after that.

Repair plan

Since it’s now winter and we don’t plan on traveling anywhere, there’s no rush to get it repaired. A new prop will probably run about $400, plus labor. We can call a diver to fix it or fix it when we haul out in the spring to do all of the annual maintenance work.

I’m heading to the boat today since it is cold and rainy. When we left last weekend, we only turned on the warm air circulator in the cabin. I want to see how well that kept it warm and dry. The weather is forecasted to get colder and down into the 30’s next week, so we will most likely turn on the ceramic heater this weekend. Scott has to change out the oil filters on Sunday, so we’ll give you an update! Stay tuned as always…..Scott and Ally

 

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