To haul out, or not to haul out?

[Ocean Roads]

Just looking for some opinions here, but when planning to do a long multi year cruise on a budget, my question is how often would you haul your boat out for routine maintenance and inspection?

Cruising the warmer parts of the Earth a weekly scrub of the bottom, inspection of the zincs and rudder bolts/buts is not so hard for most.

Wading or peeling paint just means extra scrubbing trips.

There are even trips to change through hulls in the water.

And worst of all when you pull your boat for a 24 hour turn around on the hard, it always takes more time and costs more $$.

So other then needing to be hauled out for major repair, how often would you haul out?

S.

[Weyalan]

If you are in a postion to be able to inspect below the waterline regularly (i.e. keel joint, rudder, prop, anodes, etc), via scuba, or even just a mask and snorkel, and are similarly able to give the hull a a scrub as required, the only real reason that I can see for hauling (excepting repairs) is to anti-foul. Given that you are cruising, not racing, I would have thought that putting on a decent coat of anti-foul every 12 months would be sufficient. With semi-regular scrubbing, the reduction in sailing performance will be very small.

[Sandero]

I just had a discussion with the diver who does the bottoms of hundreds of boats in the area. Some interesting things emerged from the chat.

Boat yards do NOT like and many do not allow divers to do the bottoms of their customers.

The cost he charges on a one time rate is $2.25 /ft. So a 35' boat to be scraped and re zinced is $80 plus the zinc. Racers have hard bottoms and clean up real well, but are scraped every week or two.

But they don't need annual haul out and yard work of cleaning, sanding, masking, blocking painting. This can cost for a 35' boat from 1,200 to 2,400 depending on the paint and the number of applications and bottom prep work.

Let's tale the low mid cost of say $1,600. That's would buy you 20 bottom scrubs from a diver who inspects your boat each week for about 5 months. No paint, no pollution and no work for the yard either.

I think it makes sense NOT to paint, but to have a diver scrape your bottom every week or two. And if you can do it less you are ahead of the game and the environment wins too!

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by dirtysouth

when planning to do a long multi year cruise on a budget, my question is how often would you haul your boat out

We worked it out on our next cheap port of call

We were done in April 08 and then Nov 08 because it was cheap in that location (a club in Sydney) but our next haul out isnt till Dec 09 or Jan 10 because we will be in Thailand and its cheap

In sydney because we knew it would be an extra few months than a year we put on 5 or 6 coats of ablative on all the leading edges etc.

So in your route planning you would avoid hauling out in the Med (unless it was Africa) or French Polynesia etc and plan it for cheaper countries.

Mark