We've done quite a bit during this haul-out, but a few things are interesting and are probably worth documenting in case it helps anyone else:

When hauled we noticed some cracks in the bottom paint and after inserting a knife (I've decided that the universal boatyard survey is the pocket knife insert test) huge sheets started just peeling off! The sheets were up to several square feet at a time, and appeared to consist of several layers: Bottom Paint, Misc Greenish Gray (Primer?), Blue (Barrier Coat?), White (?), Pink(?). What was being left on the hull was white, which appeared to be a continuation of the topside paint, with places where another red layer below still showed (most likely the original gelcoat). 

You can imagine the sinking feeling this led to, as we watched our hull being peeled away...Michael, the boatyard manager apparently had never seen anything quite like this, which is not a good sign when you are talking about someone with around 30 years of experience!

Here's a picture of the 'finished' product on the port side:

It remains a bit of a mystery, the generally opinion (including that of an Interlux rep who came to take a look) is that it's a 'multiple failure' sort of thing, causing the barrier coat adhesion to fail. This left us with a couple of options: 1) Grind back all the places where it still adhered (expensive, and time consuming) 2) Apply barrier coat over the non-adhered places (medium expensive) or 3) Apply bottom coat directly over top, wait and see what happens next haul out (the 'out of sight out of mind' approach).

We went with #3, as everyone recommended we take a wait-and-see attitude. Very likely that next time we haul the remaining portions will also be peeling. Once we get it all off, we'll sand off the bottom paint and re-barrier coat. Not a fun prospect, but not awful.

Since buying Pisces I've been a bit confused about how the rudder was attached, and given our cruising plans, now was the time to find out for sure. 

Pisces has a keel hung rudder, A large diameter SS shaft extends out of the top of the rudder, into a fiberglass tube that extends up to the deck level. This fiberglass tube is glassed in with supports to the hull. So far so good, a very standard arrangement. The confusion was that at the bottom of the hull where you would frequently see a massive pintle & gudgeon arrangement...there was....nothing...just more fiberglass. I thought that most likely we had a bronze fitting down there that had been covered with filler and faired in to the hull. 

To confirm this, and to confirm that the bronze fitting was in good condition, we asked the yard to do some exploratory surgery. So they started in with a grinder, deeper and deeper, but no metal...As it turns out, there is no metal at all, the heel of the skeg is actually just a fiberglass tube that accepts another length of SS shaft from the bottom piece of the rudder. This fiberglass tube piece was most likely made separately from the rest of the boat, then carefully lined up and attached with about 1/2" of thickened epoxy, and then the whole thing was wrapped with fiberglass all the way around the skeg. 

Here's a photo with exploratory hole:

If you look closely at this you can see (around the 3" mark) where the attachment starts. It's a slightly odd way of connecting the rudder, upside is there is no metal to corrode, distinct downside is that removing the rudder will require chopping this piece off. I think if we end up in a situation where we are removing the rudder according to plan, we will probably replace this set up with a more normal pintle & gudgeon with external metal fitting. In the meantime, it's not going anywhere.

While all the above mentioned haul-out items managed to get our hearts pumping, only one thing actually deserves the 'scary designation'. Due to a redesign of our engine beds during the recent repower, the engine raw water intake was no longer easy to open and close. We asked Michael and Chris at Spaulding to take a look at whether we could rotate the seacock handle to provide better clearance. As part of this, they removed an external seawater strainer on the thru-hull. 

After doing this, Chris noticed that the thru-hull didn't appear to be sitting flush with the hull, instead having a 1/4" or so lip of sealant. A little further exploration (with a pocket knife again) led to the discovery that the 3 bolts which hold the seacock in place went all the way through the hull, but at some point someone had cut the heads off the bolts, and then inserted the current thru-hull on top of them, using sealant to fill any gaps. Essentially there was nothing substantive keeping these bolts from popping out into the hull, this would have allowed the thru hull itself to become loose, leaving a good size area around the thru-hull, and three 3/8" or so holes in the hull.

This is just scary. As a result of this, Chris glassed up the area, and moved the whole set-up a few inches further outboard, with a new thru-hull and no bolt holes...Finding that alone makes the haul-out worthwhile...

So, that's the bulk of it. We also spent a good bit of time working on a redesign of our electrical system (we highly recommend Malcolm Morgan if you are in the Sausalito area and in need of electrical help), plumbing, and storage. Another haul-out is in the books, Pisces is back in the water, and we have a new set of 'to-do's' for next time we haul...pretty standard all around.