scrape, scrape, scrape...

that pretty much describes the day today...

the bottom half of cricket, when she's truly, happily at home, exists entirely under the water. oh the things her bottom must see! (as if bottoms can see) schools of fishes, skaters (a type of sea ray) flying by, an occasional dolphin, seaweed growing fathoms high, and of course, jellyfish. all this abundance of life under the sea, and under our boat, is an amazing thing to think about, but what's even more amazing is that all this life is dependent on all kinds of other life you can't even really see! and there is a lot of it! i mean aaaaa lot! i just read something that said that there is 300 billion tons of phytoplankton, basically microscopic, underwater plants, in our sea! that's twice as much as all the plants above the water! also there is zooplankton. teeny-tiny little critters that swim around eating phytoplankton, and dead stuff, and some of it growing into bigger critters we can see... and that brings me to the point...

these little critters, of which there are very many, love to attach themselves to all kinds of stuff that are under the water... remember what i said about cricket's bottom half? yup! under the water! now, i'm all for supporting all that life under the sea {one more quick fact... i can't resist, it's so interesting... in the ocean's food chain it takes 10 tons of phytoplankton to produce about 2 pounds of fish we can eat! wow! see why i couldn't resist that one?}... i'm all for supporting that life, but not on my boat! not only can all that life growing on the bottom of cricket slow her down considerably, but it can eventually sink her by eating away at the hull, making those upon cricket part of the seas food chain! now by all this talk you might be thinking that i'm scrape, scrape, scraping that living stuff off of her, and while we did have to power wash and scrape much of it off (namely barnacles. more on them on another blog), the stuff i'm scraping is this awful stuff called "bottom paint." bottom paint is not your regular, run of the mill coating you put on the side of your outhouse. nope. it's special stuff that's supposed to keep the sea-life from growing down under. basically it does this by having pesticide and herbicide built right into it. yuck! it's supposed to be ok in the water, cause all that icky stuff mostly stays in the paint, but take the boat out of the water, and start scraping the paint that's getting loose (just like a flakey barn) and... let me just say you've got to wear a face mask and goggles and such. and catch as much of the chip n flakes as you can. the work itself is not that fun, 'specially if you don't really feel like you know what you're doin', but if you take it one little scrape at a time, keep looking around at all the beauty in deltaville when you can, feeling the sun and the breeze, keep dreaming about when this is all going in the water, and try not to think too much about how much you miss your best pal and wife, it's tolerable. : )

and one more thing. it's about feeling my lack of confidence in how i'm going about this task i've never done before... i found out that if you just get brave enough to go talk to the folks who do know something about the subject, a guy named jim will personally come out to your boat and comfort you that you are doing it right (or close enough), give you more options and advice, and will tell you he'll come by and check on you tomorrow! thanks jim!