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After 18 months in the water and a planned trip coming up it was time to clean Rose Lee's bottom . I did a bit of research on cleaning hulls while in the water and watched a few YouTube videos of a diver cleaning a 41 foot sailboat and figured I would give it a go. So after a stop at our local dive shop this morning to rent a full set of gear and two tanks of air I was all set. From the videos I learned that a suction cup was required to hang on to the hull with one hand while you scrubbed off the bottom with your free hand. Earlier in the week I picked up a couple small sink plungers from home depot, I removed the wooden handles from the two plungers and inserted a small plastic elbow in each and joined them with a small plastic coupler. What I ended up with was a nice little handle with two large suction cups for about $10.00, sweet! I also put a loop of bungy cord on my plunger and my scrubber that would slip over each hand so I wouldn't accidentally drop them. So this morning at around 11:00 am with my excellent spotter Joyce I jumped in the 55 degree water and went to work (I don't think I mentioned that I am a new diver and today would be my fourth dive). Let me tell you this is not as easy as it looks on TV, I fumbled my way through it though and the tools I made up worked great. The prop was completely encrusted with barnacles and I used a stiff steel brush to clean that up. My shaft anode was also pretty eaten up, which was a bit of an oversight on my part (I really should have anticipated that). After I finished my 1st Tank and was taking a break my buddy Jim stopped by and spotted for me during my 2nd tank while Joyce took off for our local marine store to see if she could score an anode. Joyce got back with the new anode just as I was finishing the bottom and I had just enough air left to install the new anode and remove the old one (which was close to falling off). All in all we had an exhausting but very productive day and we now have a clean bottom, clean prop and new anode. My advice for anyone who wants to give this a try don,t start out on a 47 foot boat with a wing keel its a lot of underwater real estate to clean:)
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