Growing up I always loved the day we put our boat (C&C 25) in the water in the water for the first time. There was the long car ride over to Northern Harbour with a stop at Canadian Tire along the way. In later years, maybe a stop at Subway to grab some food. Then we’d have to find the boat since it invariably got moved from the location where we ended putting it away the previous fall. Once we found it we’d crack it open and start working. Without a doubt while my dad was busy working on the more technical things we the kids would have to clean and wax the bottom (first we’d have to go steal someone’s ladder since we never had our own. we also would have to haul the water from seemingly very far away). It was definitely the worst part of the day (the best part being eating licorice on the boat once it was in the water and headed to Echo Bay).
Fast forward a whole bunch of years and I’m now crewing on a serious racing boat. We even bring in top coaches to help us improve our game. Turns out one of the things the winners do is clean their boats before every race. Now since our boats are not dry docked this means that yes, someone has to go swimming. This week was our first week getting on top of this detail and I drew the short stick and spent fifteen minutes diving under the boat with a sponge and rubbing off the growth from the last two weeks (we had a week off because of July 4th). Plus it wasn’t even hot and sunny. Not a lengthy of a job as cleaning and waxing a dry docked C&C 25 but still, it’s kinda freaky being four feet underwater on a dark cloudy day :).