Well, the end of our sailing season has arrived. We hauled our boat out of the water at North Sound Marina on Antigua. There was approximately a 30-knot cross-wind at the slip so hauling out was a challenge. We made it and the boat is now on the hard.

We spend the last four days preparing the boat to be on land for seven months. This means working on the engines, water pipes, water tanks/maker, and the bottom of the boat. Once we arrived, we had the yard power wash the bottom of the boat. Unfortunately that didn’t remove the barnacles that had attached and removing them was a manual process that took approximately eight hours. By the end of the four days, everything inside of the boat was bagged and the ceilings/walls were cleaned and wiped down with vinegar. We did this last year and were lucky to return to a boat free of mildew. We hope that we have the same luck this season. And, we washed the outside of the entire boat. It is unbelievable the amount of cleaning and preparation that goes into leaving the boat on the hard. Even with the advanced work that we did the week prior, we spent10-hours every day at the marina before returning to the nearby Air B & B that we rented.