Working and touring

Paul had the rudders reinstalled and adjusted early on Monday morning. Jack finished the second coat of bottom paint on Sunday, so the only thing holding us up was the new zincs for the saildrives. Luckily they arrived Monday morning and Jack got right to work installing them.

The props are another dramatic change after this trip to the yard. Jack spent a lot of time cleaning them up, greasing the gears and coating them with Lanocote. There are as many opinions on how to prevent marine growth on props as there are sailors. They were previously coated in bottom paint, so we’ll see if the Lanocote does as well or better than the paint.

Here are the before and after photos of the props.

By noon on Monday we had everything pretty much done, so we took another bike ride into town to do some touring. We visited the National Cemetery, a very small but peaceful one. Many of the graves dated from the “Indian War” of 1835.

Then we rode to the old City Gate and the 17th century Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fortification in North America and we got there just in time for the firearms demonstration.

Moments later, the historic weapon they were shooting exploded prematurely, injuring the park ranger.

We couldn’t tell from a distance what the injury was but we couldn’t see any blood so we suspect a burn. Eventually the paramedics came and he seemed to be in good hands. Never saw that one before.

We passed on going into the fort and instead just walked the perimeter.

Then we moseyed back home up and down the lovely streets of old St. Augustine.

We feel pretty good about the day, and just plan to take a trip to Target before our launch Tuesday.