One sure thing a boat owner can count on, is having to haul out their boat to have bottom work done on it. Depending on the owner and the condition of the boat, it can be done anywhere from 1-4 years apart. The last time Blue Turtle was hauled out by the previous owners, was about 3 years ago. When Randy and I bought the boat, we knew we’d have to have her hauled out within the first year to fix a few blisters and get a new paint job. We decided to have her hauled out today at Olsen Marine Service on Fort Myers Beach.

We were due to have the boat hauled out at 12:30pm. Randy is exceptionally punctual and it didn’t take as long as we thought it would to get from the Cape Coral Yacht Club to Fort Myers Beach. We ended up having about an hour to kill before heading into Olsen’s.  Since we were idling off of Sanibel Island, I had him take us over to Lighthouse beach so I could get some shots of the lighthouse from the water.

When it was time for us to head into the channel to go to Olsen’s, Randy had his work cut out for him. The channel going into Fort Myers beach has pretty much disappeared since Tropical Storm Debby came through back in June. My parents had their trawler, Island Time,  hauled out by Olsen’s just a couple of weeks ago, so thankfully, they gave us the run down. We were told to go outside of the green channel marker, which is usually a no-no, but the water was deep enough there for us to get through. Some of the red channel markers were actuall sitting on the beach (see below).

Once at Olsen’s, Randy did an exceptional job navigating Blue Turtle into the sling waiting for us. The Olsen’s crew took it from there. While the trawler was still in the sling, they power washed it and prepared to put it on blocks. Besides having the bottom paint done, we’ll have some of our frozen thru-hulls replaced and have the dinghy lift removed. The current Jatco Trillogy dinghy lift works great, but it takes up a huge amount of our swim platform. Both Randy and I are divers and his son, Corey, is a fish so it just makes sense to have a St. Croix davit system installed that we can remove when we plan to dive/snorkel. We’re hoping after all this work that we’ll be back in the water in about 2 weeks. We look forward to being aquatic once again.