Splashed!

Silence went back into the water yesterday morning, after a week on dry land. She has a nice clean bottom, and freshly applied poliglow (special thanks to Joe for his help on Saturday).

We were lucky to be in Annapolis yesterday, since it was also the day of the Blue Angels rehearsal flight at the Naval Academy. We anchored in the harbor for the show, then sailed down to the West River late in the afternoon. We had 15 knots of breeze from the NW, so we saw all points of sail, mostly on starboard. We peaked at 8.2 knots of boatspeed, and spent lot's of time in the mid 7s. Excellent sailing!

Silence once more...

Silence has her name on once again, this time with a new layout. Also today, the mechanic was by and is working on the raw water pumps for both the main engine and generator. The generator pump is in a location that makes it impossible to replace the impeller with out removing the pump, so I generally leave that work to the mechanic. The main engine pump is accessible, but the bolts looked likely to shear off due to rust. I decided to leave it to an expert to extract these old bolts.

It looks like we are on target for relaunching next Monday!

On the Hard

Silence was hauled out yesterday. While she was in the slings, Ted, from Seaside Boatworks checked out the centerboard pendant. The pendant is in great condition, no burrs, no corosion. Pretty amazing for a 10+ year old piece of hardware which spends all of it's time under water.

I stripped off the name and port on the transom, preparing the way for re-lettering. If you ever need to remove old adhesive residue like that left behind after peeling off vinyl lettering, check out Goo Gone. It's magic stuff! The old letters were looking worn and we want to reorganize the transom layout. Accent Graphics will be installing the new letters sometime this week.

This evening I went over to check on the progress of the bottom work and found the bottom already painted. The most important of the maintenance work is already taken care of.

Haulout

The forecast for today was not very promising, however, we managed to dodge the rain and had a nice sail from the West River up to Annapolis. Silence is now at the dock at Jabin's waiting to be hauled out tomorrow. We will be painting the bottom, renewing the poliglow, greasing all of the through-hulls, and checking the centerboard pendant. The pendant is probably 10 years old or more, so we wonder how it's doing.

Volvo Restart from Annapolis

Silence left the dock for only the second time on Sunday, to head out to the Volvo restart. The day began with big breezes, but, by the time of the start at 1:00 PM, the breeze had fallen off to around 10 knots. No worries, these boats still make 10-12 knots of boat speed in these conditions!

We were positioned south of the starting line, which also served as a downwind gate before the racers headed down the Bay. We got lucky with our position and the boats came through the spectator fleet not far from our location. It was a great day for everyone aboard.