Ray Stockdale and Chris Matthews helped me take Nova Vida to Urangan Boat Harbour for the boat's annual maintenance, departing Maryborough on Sunday October 16th.  We decided on Urangan rather than Maryborough for maintenance because Maryborough has no travel lift, we were aware of horror stories concerning one of its slipways, and Urangan seemed to offer a better variety of marine tradesmen.

Our trip downriver was accomplished without touching bottom for a change, and we anchored for the night just inside River Heads at the mouth of the Susan River.  We made an early start next morning, to be at the boat harbour and ready for the travel lift by 9:30.  Meanwhile, Sam Heidenreich drove my van from Maryborough to meet us, loaded with ladders and tools that we would need for the work to come.

Pictures:

1.  shows Nova Vida being moved to the Fishermen's Wharf hardstanding area at Urangan Boat Harbour.  Note the sagging forestay which had to be disconnected from the bow to fit in the travel lift (which we were told later is only a toy).

2.  is a rare photo of me at work, water blasting the weed and old loose paint from the hull.  We were surprised at the flurry of paint flakes washed off by this process, revealing at least half a dozen different colours of paint applied at different stages by earlier owners.  The different paints would not be a problem if they were well stuck to each other, but the ease with which they were flaking off meant that we had a big job ahead of us, sanding most of them off to get a good base for the new coats.

3.  Sam did more than his fair share of the water blasting, and seemed to enjoy it.  The longer Sam blasted, the more paint that flaked off.  When not working Sam was busy with the camera, revelling in his role of official photographer for this project.

4.  After water blasting, Nova Vida was installed in a cradle where all remaining work was completed over a two week period..  This photo was taken just after a start had been made to wash the dirty water stains from the sides of the boat.

Ray and Chris returned to Maryborough, leaving Sam and me the hardest and most unpleasant job of scraping and sanding the old antifouling from the hull.  This job took several days during which we were both covered with poisonous blue dust.  No photos were taken during these days, which we wanted to forget as soon as possible.

Meanwhile there were other jobs to be attended to.  Some minor repairs to fibreglass required the boat to dry out thoroughly, something that was delayed by a week of rainy days.  I wanted the prop shaft bearings replaced, but the engineer who had undertaken to do the job was away in Bundaberg for over a week, causing another delay.  Sam serviced the water pump for the head to cure its leaks, and I replaced the head outlet valve that had been inconveniently located.  In between all that we retired to Maryborough for a rest a couple of times when it all seemed too hard.

Applying the new paint was the easiest job of all; the slipway painter Rodney sprayed on a tie-coat then next day the antifouling, leaving the boat ready to go back into the water the following day, Wednesday November 2nd.

5.  At some stage during the two weeks of work Sam took this photo of me stealing an after-lunch snooze.  Just thinking of all the work still to be done frequently made me feel tired!  The clean state of my clothes in this picture indicates that I must have been doing one of the clever jobs that morning... perhaps it was the day I mixed up some touch-up paint for our red stripe, or maybe the day I applied the boat's name Nova Vida to the bows in brilliant blue lettering.

6. Ray helped me sail the boat back to Maryborough after the travel lift placed us back in the water around 10am Wednesday.  Sam drove my van home with all the tools and ladders, and arrived there within an hour.  Ray and I were a lot slower, as we had to follow a round-about route around Big Woody Island before we could head towards River Heads.  A north easterly wind allowed us to unfurl a sail for most of the trip.

We anchored about 4pm just before the shallow Horseshoe Bend of the Mary River and had a sleep and some dinner whilst waiting for the tide to rise.  We were anxious to avoid scrubbing stll soft antifouling from the bottom of our keel by running aground on this trip.  The night was moonless and dark but we got under way again around 8pm, and made the trip upriver on the rising tide in a record time (for us) of two and a half hours, touching 9 knots over ground at times. This picture shows Nova Vida back at her Maryborough mooring, the morning after our arrival.