"Make cleaning your new favorite"

Charlie has his work cut out for him reworking some of the drains in the cockpit and wrestling with the bilge pump, so while he's doing that it's me against the dirt in the rest of the boat, and really, "dirt" is an understated way to describe what we're dealing with here - it's the kind of grossness that makes dealing with it feel less like cleaning, and more like doing battle with an enemy that has access to biological weaponry. So for the last two days, I've put on my little SARS mask and my knee pads, and wielded my brand new 14-functions-in-one paint scraper and my bleach spray bottle to the best of my abilities, blasting through all of the assorted rust and dirt and mold and general marine ickiness that has found its way over every inch of our poor boat.

Below: battle mode, and victory mode

It's been pretty intense, but I've found that with enough yelling and swearing, there's nothing so gross I can't deal with it (although, sometimes I throw up a little bit in my mouth/sars mask). Watching the boat get brighter and shinier with each swipe of the sponge has been very gratifying, and totally worth losing half of my brain to bleach fumes. Also, when I want to take a break, I just pop my head out of the hatch, and I see this:




... which is AWESOME! I think we've gotten enough done over the last couple of days to have earned some sailing time tomorrow, so hopefully tomorrow is the day when this officially evolves from a scrubbing and fixing blog to an actual sailing blog... stay tuned!