We find people who do extreme sports to see their limits and push their bodies beyond those slightly amusing. Why join costly competitions when you can also spend a few days in a boat yard?
12-hour shifts of doing hard work you’re not used to (sanding and painting overhead), in cool gear (overalls with hoods, Darth Vader respirator mask and constantly fogging goggles), in combination with time pressure (just 2 days before the next heavy rainfall is predicted) and the thrill of adrenaline bursts (oh no, it’s drizzling again, get the paint can under cover!!) are just as exciting as a sports event.
We hauled-out and cleaned the hull on Monday, sanded the bootstripe and the hull, painted the bootstripe (decorative stripe along the waterline) and put on a first coat of antifouling on Tuesday while a mechanic changed the cutless bearing on the propeller shaft before it started raining in the evening. On Wednesday we managed to splash on another 3 coats of antifouling wading through the swamp underneath our boat and finished just before torrential downpours started that kept on until Thursday afternoon when we used a break in the weather to have the boat moved a bit in order to paint the bits that had been hidden under the supporting stanchions. Today the travellift put us back into the water during a squall with strong gusts and horizontal rain–we were soaking wet and shivering by the time we reached the anchorage, but just as proud as if we’d won a gold medal 
