Trying to make the boat shine

While I tend to focus much more on the functional side, both in the real world and on this blog, it is important that we keep One Love not just running perfectly but also looking her best. To this end, over the past few weeks we have put a lot of mental energy into compounding and waxing the boat, even if that hasn’t actually translated into real work.

Back when we were anchored at Hog Island in Grenada, our friends Dustin and Courtney dropped by One Love to give us a brief lesson in how they keep their 70′ Privilege Captiva looking so great. It’s a labor-intensive, time-consuming, multi-step procedure and one that I’m sure hasn’t been done to One Love since well before we took possession of her. Either unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, the weather allowed us to sail north before we got around to completing that job.

After arriving to our base in St. Thomas, we were introduced to Rob, a fellow charter captain, who had been prepping all of the boats registered for the upcoming charter shows. While our charter calendar is full enough that we’ve decided to skip the shows, we went ahead and contracted Rob to make One Love shine too. Sadly, Mother Nature had other plans!

Hidden under that massive blog of rain is both St. Thomas and Puerto Rico.

For the last two days we have had a ridiculous amount of rain. So much so that there have been flash flood warnings for both the Virgins Islands and for Puerto Rico. While the boys did manage to get most of the deck area done before the rain started, we decided today that with the present forecast, the topsides (the sides of the boat from the waterline to the deck) will have to wait until next week. Or until whenever Mother Nature thinks that it’s ok for us to do the job. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later. One Love’s owner Michael is due to visit on the 15th and we’d really like to have her looking her best for his arrival.