As with a couple of these projects, this was done a long time ago, but I am just getting it into the WEB page.

I decided to haul the boat out of the water to accomplish three things. One was to raise the water line above the water!! When we left Houston in June of 2004, we had so filled the boat with supplies, additional hardware and options that there was no visible waterline. I also wanted to service three seacocks on the port side in the galley. I also needed to put two more thru-hulls in the hull on the port side. These were for the water maker brine discharge and the ice maker cooling water discharge. These two would be put between the three thru-hulls that were already on the port side about six inches above the waterline. The three existing thru-hulls were for the forward air conditioner cooling water discharge, the refrigeration cooling water discharge, and the forward sump discharge. When the boat was out of the water I decided to put drip plates on the exterior of the thru-hulls, so the water discharge would not make the stains on the side of the hull. The drip plates turned out to be a great idea, except when sailing. Most of the time the lazy sheet on the head sail will get caught under the plates. Then it is necessary to get it out from under the drip plates.

The pictures show all the wonderful help we had getting the boat over to the haul out slip at South Texas Boat Yard in Watergate Yachting Center. The very competent crew at South Texas, Indio and Pedro, got the boat out and blocked without a problem. As you can see I actually got Ken working to help out on the projects. It was great fun working with Ken and Al, and we got the job done without a problem. One of the seacocks would not come back, so it was replaced. The remaining two were taken apart and serviced and put back in. The pictures also show some of the work in progress and the the boat going back into the water.

Notice the growth in a couple of the photos. I am sure that this is from our time in Port Isabel. When we were in Port Isabel, these type of mollusks were all over down there, and I had never seen them in the Clear Lake Shores area.