Once the Travel Lift had carried Simba to a parking space in a row of yachts and large blocks were placed beneath her keel and jack stands located under her hull to keep her upright, the lift's four belts were removed from her girth and the ungainly beast retreated to its birth at the boat haulout pad.
The next day Southern Equipment and Services' foreman Jim Coombs arrived with Craig and Harold to unload stacks of steel scaffolding. Over the next three days the scaffolding was erected 20 feet high to completely surround Simba. Then the entire structure was wrapped with a blue plastic tarp to contain the paint chips and rust scale produced by sand blasting. For health reasons, the "sand" is now particles of recycled glass.
Thursday and Friday Craig and Harold finally turned their attention to the boat. First they blasted in the mornings. Inside the enclosure Craig directed the nozzle of the high pressure hose while outside, Harold fed the bagged ground glass into a hopper. Where blasted, the steel turned powdery, crystalline, white. After one half of one side of the hull was blasted, a three gallon batch of epoxy paint was mixed and sprayed onto the hull.
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