It’s that time of year again when the troller needs to be given a facelift and the whole nine yards of a spa treatment. The “spa” is a marine ways near Campbell River. After you make the nail-biting trip up the river a little way, you steer into a  passageway that has most likely been dredged out just to make sure you don’t hit bottom.

On either side of this passageway, are walkways heavily reinforced to hold the weight of a travel lift carrying a boat weighing many tons.

The Work:

Here is the travel lift that lifted the troller Eden Lake out of the water about ten days ago. While the boat sat on the parking lot, propped up on either side with braces, the Captain slaved to power wash the boat’s hull, and cooling pipes. He replaced the bars of zinc as they have been “eaten” by electrolysis. Fresh bars are put on each year to divert the electrolysis from destroying the metal cooling pipes and the propeller.

The top of the hull is sanded and repainted. The gum wood (trim and railings, etc.) is coated with Cetol. The bottom of the hull is painted with anti-fouling paint to make the wood unpalatable to any marine life that wants to make its home there.

When the boat is all clean and shiny, it’s ready to be put back in the water. The travel lift puts the belts under the boat and carries it back to the water. It drives along the two walkways until the boat is suspended over the water and then it is gradually lowered back down where it belongs.

And off it goes, all tiddled up.

The Play:

Sometimes the boat skippers hire help for this grueling work. Even women can do this job (rather well, I might add). If you want to read about a good-looking woman who found romance after working on a troller  — and no, I’m not talking about Yours Truly — why not download the free novel “The Wind Weeps”? If you enjoy it and would like to read the sequel, it would cost you a big $2.99 to buy Reckoning Tide.  The books are available on all amazon sites, as well as on smashwords.com (for those who have e-readers other than Kindle).  Why not give these books a try? You might like them a lot.

You can just click on the book covers at the side of this blog post to find out more about them.

Or go to my website: www.anneli-purchase.com