Lifting out at St Maarten Shipyard on the Dutch side of Saint Martin. We need to do the bottom and a couple of other projects.



Check out the underwater garden!
Did I mention we need to do the bottom?? Corals have grown up quickly since we reached the warm Caribbean waters. Our 8-month old bottom paint was Cruiser Uno and it worked fine in Europe. Not so good for the tropics it seems.


We wanted to do the bottom ourselves this time. I always did it myself on our previous boats but had Northshore (builders of Southerly) do it when we went back there to haul out the previous seasons. I wanted to do it at least once to see how hard it was on the new larger boat, and to get a really close look at the bottom.



Working on the Southerly with her keel swung down I am using a scaffold. We are trying out "Seahawk Islands 44 Hard" bottom paint. It was $320/gallon minus a 10% discount at Island Waterworld. It is supposed to cover 400 sq feet/gallon. We bought 3 gallons of it and managed to get 1.8 coats of paint. I think the warm weather meant it went on thicker than normal.


This lift can raise the hull high enough to drop the keel to her full draft so I could paint the whole thing. We draw 10’3 with it all the way down and need a ladder to reach the bottom and finish up the painting. The patch in front of the keel is where we stood on the blocks while hauled. The yard kindly let us sit in the lift overnight so we could paint the last bits of the hull that had been under the stands. Then it could dry properly. St Maarten Shipyard was excellent all round! Highly recommended! Our bill was quite reasonable I think...



Haul/Launch.................$441
Blocking.......................$122
Pressure Wash...............$98
Storage (while home)... $448
Labour (scrape hull)......$105

All very good rates based I think. This is based on our 49 foot boat with 14’ beam. The additional labour was for an extra sanding/scraping of the hull to remove the barnacle bases and make a super-smooth hull.



The other nice thing about hauling out in St Maarten is the access to the huge chandleries, Island Waterworld, Budget Marine, and other parts/services. These are second to none in the Caribbean.



Relaunching after a successful haulout... Hank steers the sealift back in with the remote control.


This device is unique I think. It can lift 90 tons, it can also accommodate quite large catamarans lifting under the wing deck. The boat sits gently on inflated tubes so its also good for wooden hulls.

Back at anchor...