Coat number two

Is looking pretty sweet. See the shine? Awesome.


-- Post From My iPhone

Still too hot

So much for the cool weather. We came down to put on a coat of paint but it is still about ten degrees too hot. We will be sweating into the paint. Decided on how to put doors in the vee berth and the head.

Also found a great article in good old boat about fabricating your own odor proof sewage holding tank out of PVC pipe, which will put a real head back on the list of projects for this fall.




Is anyone interestedin a six foot wooden dinghy as seen under the bow? Free to good home.

-- Post From My iPhone

PS

If you are going to post a comment, please post in english. Thanks.

It's Confirmed, staying dry this year

We decided to wait to launch until next spring. The Perfection came up so nicely on the hatch covers that we feel that waiting for the cooler temperatures of this fall to put the final coats on will make a tremendous difference. Even with just the primer on, the fairing Matt did was so good that it looks like a new boat. Can't wait to do the hull and the interior! This is amazing!

You can see your face in it. The paint is absolutely amazing.

Also, we ordered four toe rail mounted stanchion baes from Holland Marine in Canada about a month ago and they finally came in. The should open up our little skinny gunnels a little bit, thank goodness.  We are also plotting to sneak our own materials in to the West Marine to use their complimentary swager for the lifelines.  They said if I bought the cable there I could use that. Could I pretend I thought they meant $4.00 keychain, or perhaps, two feet of cable instead of 40?

Products

I realize now that I haven't mentioned what we are using for paint.  We're doing the decks with two part Interlux Perfection. The primer for that is a two part primer called Interlux PrimeKote. Hard as nails. Even with just two coats of primer on some parts the fiberglass feels stiffer and is amazingly glossy.  And, per Interlux, once this primer is cured you can slap epoxy on top of it and it will bond. Amazing. Chemistry is just amazing.

The interior will be one part Interlux Brightsides, which we are also using for the dinghy. I'm not sure what the primer is called for that. It's the corresponding Interlux product.

Next spring we'll be painting the hull, and will most likely use the Perfection for the hull, with the Brightsides on the bootstripe.

Also, I just ordered toe rail stanchion bases from Holland Marine, made from the Grampian mold. I think this will make a tremendous difference.

Fairing and priming

She is looking sharp with a cost of primer in the cockpit.




She is starting to look like a different boat.










I made winch covers. Well, a winch cover, for our new size 16 barient winches, the second one defeated me. This multilayered three dimensional sewing thing is much harder than it looks. Thanks for the half assed instructions don Casey.


I used shock cord to make them fit really tightly to the waist of the winch.

Still quite a lot of swing left, and tons more priming.

Post From My iPhone

Fairing fairing fairing

With about twenty coats of fairing compound she is starting to look pretty good. The cockpit sole is nice and solid and smooth, the cabinhouse no longer flexes when you walk on it, even with the bulkheads still out of her, and we are almost ready to start applying the fairing primer.

Just have to cut the holes for the windows and thicken up the fiberglass around the openings to make sure they are nice and flat to make a good seal. First we held the window frames up and traced the interior shape with a sharpie, then Matt did the deed and cut PERFECT openings with a jigsaw.

Here is the interior shot.

Can't wait to see it with the primer on. It already looks fabulous.

Matt even glassed over our mis-placed through hull and fixed the fiberglass we had to cut out in the hanging locker so we could fit the seacock into the limited space. Now the through hull sits right under the sink so we can seriously reduce the amount of nasty hose we have to use.

The primer is starting to go on. Can you imagine, but the boat had a pink tint to it before, which we never noticed because we had no basis for comparison. 

All the hatch covers laid out on the ground with their first coat of primer drying.

Also throwing some more alkyd enamel on the stowage lids since some of them never got more than one last year and still looked pretty rough.

Coming Next -- Pics of the new handrails, companionway ladder, and misc woodwork.

Random picture

Matt met a fellow sailor who happened to get a picture if his own boat with us in the background. Sigh. Hopefully soon we will be out there again!




-- Post From My iPhone

Long Time No See

I have been remiss in my postings, but the progress has been tremendous.

To address some questions we've received about the cockpit sole, I'd like to say that we knew we needed to do it because about one third of the sole was squishy and produced a sound like water been squeezed in a sponge when pressure was applied. Water was seeping up through the rudder post shaft also. There was about one quarter inch of very alarming flex back there. It was really really apparent. When Matt cut the first hole in it at the very stern, about a gallon of black putrid water gushed out.  Again, it was really really apparent. If you're in doubt, I'm sure you're fine.

As to why we are pouring so much energy into this boat, we think about it this way -- we paid 500 dollars for a customizable hull and are now customizing it to be what we want. Also, we are having a crash course in yacht repair, cabinetry, and just about everything else.

In my last post the cockpit sole had just been opened up.  We lifted and scraped all of the wood out until there was just a one layer skin of fiberglass in the bottom. We could no longer stand in the cockpit but had to stand inside the lazarette openings on the inside of the hull.

Matt laid a series of squares of plywood down in a bed of thickened expoxy, so each one is isolated to reduce the chance of the entire sole rotting away again.

Meanwhile at home we are working on the bulkheads and the split rudder.

I don't have step by step pictures of the rudder, but I taped up over the split, clamped the two sides tight and poured straight epoxy down into the crack. I did this probably ten times before the crack was completely filled. I sanded it back to its original shape. Now she needs to be covered in Barrier Kote and repainted with bottom paint.

More later, I need to upload additional pictures.

Cockpit sole=open

Nothing but rot under the Fiberglass.

-- Post From My iPhone

I am Lazy

Matt spent two days grinding off the neven surfaces and beveling the portlight openings to prepare them to be glassed over.  This apparently resulted in such a cloud of dangerous particles of fiberglass flying around that we needed to upgrade the shopvac and put a filter on the fan that ventilates the tarp enclosure. So sad I missed all that.

Structural fairing compound goes up right onto the lexan windows we installed last year.

Meanwhile, my job is to clean the adhesive and paper off of the bowmar windows we bought at Bacon's, which allows me to stay home and not in all the fiberglass. Sweet. Also, I made a cover for the tiller. I think the diligence score looks something like this: Matt: 400,000 Carrie:  2

Getting ready to paint the decks

In order to glass over the existing windows, remove all the deck fittings a repaint, we have to keep her safe from rain. Probably should have started sooner than march, but there has been a lot of snow. Went to Lowe's and picked up about thirty PVC pipes and joints.

It starts to go up.

It starts to take shape.

We hang the tarp up.











Pretty neato. We used zip ties, which didn't even last a week. We came back to find the whole thing lying in the mud. Went back to the old drawing board, put it back up with bolts and nuts and used PVC pipe cement. So far so good, she made it a week.

Now that things are a bit more secure, everything is coming off and out, hatch covers, sliders, handles, instruments .. .

Seems like going back to square one.

This is the color of my broken heart. My teak faced bulkheads are out. Rotten on the bottoms. Not doing much good, were they? We lost all the nice trim boards that were attached to them, too. 

Head, meet dinette. Hanging locker, meet galley. Looks big inside now, and it also looks nearly as creepy as it did when we bought it. Nothing like demolition to make you feel really fricking sad. And fill your yard up with bulkheads and bow rails and stuff.

-- Post From My iPhone

Plans, plans and more plans

If it doesn't snow too much, this weekend we are building a PVC frame to hang a tarp on. I'm taking my new Sailrite Ultrafeed down to the club and we're going to sew it into the correct shape (hopefully). If I have time I want to put some covered screen vents on and maybe a door. Let's see if the execution can keep up with the idea . . .

Split Rudder: Step One, Remove Rudder

Completed without incident. Hope the rest of the repair goes as well. Much to my surprise, the whole assembly did not plop out at the speed of gravity once the retaining pin was removed, but had to be slowly pulled out. The whole thing was very reassuring, and surprisingly still well lubricated.

Just for laughs, I found the email that the prior owner sent us to try to convince us to buy the boat last year. Let's call him Mr. Smith to simplify it.  I didn't change anything, seriously. And the pictures below are the ones he included.

Hello Matthew,


This boat can become a beautiful sailing machine. Any of the work

that needs to be done on the boat itself can be done by the average

handy person. However, materials and sweat (man hours) will need

to be invested. Other sailors on the yard often are generous in

giving advise and there are books that can help as well. Keep

this in mind also: I will be showing this boat to an interested

party this weekend. If you would like to see it please call me

at ###-###-####. I hope the images and information below

is helpful to you. Thanks for your interest.



Jeff