Well 2009 is behind us and we are getting ready for a new fishing season. We had a few trips on the books for December but could only run one because of the weather. Lots of rain and wind!

Mark has been busy since his hip replacement. He’s been in the garage lubricating all the reels, and redoing the fishing rods that needed repair. He’s working on speed baits painting them and replacing the big hooks. All the bait traps and the big holding pen were covered up with oysters and needed repair. He finished all that this past weekend. He’s got a good jump on the season!

Friday Mark and Kyle take the boat to dry dock over in Freeport. We’ve got our bi-annual hull inspection with the Coast Guard on Monday. The CG inspectors will go over the boat’s hull to make sure it is not compromised in any way… like delaminating. If it is, Mark fixes it by sanding it down and repairing it with new fiberglass. They check lots of other things too but we don’t anticipate anything being wrong.  The boat doesn’t go in the water again until everything is up to code. The CG is going to make sure that the boat is totally safe.

The bottom of the boat gets scraped, sanded, and repainted. The propellers get taken over to Pensacola to be balanced. Then the boat gets waxed, buffed and the new stern letters get put on. It will look like new when all the work is completed.

The temperature is supposed to be 43 on Friday with a low of 22. Hopefully the weather predictors are wrong . This could be a very cold dry dock!