“It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard life on the hard
Sun and salt take their toll on the boat and me
Ain’t no way around it, got to haul out on the hard
It’s time to go a cruising in the working yard…”
Some of the words from American cruiser and songstress Eileen Quin.
When we left New Zealand in our Colin Child 42-foot steel ketch in 2008 we never imagined we would be spending so much time and money being hauled out – ‘ladder living’, we called it. We thought maybe every two years for anti-fouling, but 10 times in close to eight years?!
It is not that is a bad boat, because she isn’t, but sadly there was a recurring problem with her stern gland that gave us most of our problems. No mechanic, technician, or helpful cruiser from
