It is time to invert Naiad in order to complete the leak repair and to add a keel band. The forecast for the next few days is reasonably warm for the time of year so it's time to get a move on.

The braces, chain hoists and strops in place ready for the lift.

First thing to do is to take away the trailer.

Nothing holding her up but the strops. The butane gas bottles you can see behind Naiad will be used to support the aft end.

She's over by about 45 degrees and I have to stop myself from hyperventilating about this point in the procedure. The two wooden blocks you can see on the left of the photo are the support for the fore end of the hull.

Nearly 90 degrees and at this point we manually tip her over the balance point rather than let her tip over uncontrolled.

Now 45 degrees from being completely inverted.

And she's down. And I give a big sigh of relief and try to relax a bit. I find this procedure as well as the reinversion to be quite taxing.

Naiad's hull is a bit hairy but considering that I did no underwater maintenance at all last year, this is pretty good. Uncle Charles used to use either a deck brush to brush the hull or the tin from his favourite steak and kidney pudding to scrape the hull almost every time he beached. Either that or he visited fresh water for a few days.

This is the view 25 minutes later and that includes sweeping up all the detritus. All the main fouling came off very easily. This is either due to the copper epoxy, or the fact that the salt from the sea has kept the vegetation damp or both. Either way this is about the quickest and easiest hull scrubbing I've ever done. Some fouling remains but that will come off with a stiff bristle brush and some water. The remains of the barnacles will be removed using a sander, but I was going to do that anyway. Sand the hull I mean.

Looking good and I should be able to get the hull completely cleaned off tomorrow. That has to be done before any hull work is carried out.

This is the pile of fouling that came off the hull.

There are a few areas of damage on the hull where the weight of the boat rests on the rollers of the trailer. This is the reason for installing the keel band. The metal, although quite thin, will be strong enough to prevent this from happening in future. I'll also make a keel shoe for the trailer that will prevent the load from being concentrated at one point. Once this has dried out a little I'll first use some penetrating epoxy to soak into the wood fibres before fixing on the keel band which will also be bedded with epoxy...probably.

The bilge keels also show some damage for exactly the same reason.

Still, a good evening's work.

Time for a cup of tea.