Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The project limps along...

Literally.

Work on the boat pretty much stopped back in mid-April. I developed a pretty nifty infection in a toe on my right foot and couldn’t navigate very well. In addition, I went on my annual week-long trip to Utah to do some off-road riding and pretty much spent the entire time sick as a dog. Got back from that the and the infection in my foot went nuclear. Stuffing my foot into a rigid dual-sport boot was probably not a great move. Multiple doctors visits and antibiotic regimes later, I’m finally able to hobble around a bit.

So, in the past few days I’ve started to get back on track. I still can’t climb around under the cockpit to finish off the work on putting in hoses and thru-hulls for the new bilge pumps but that can wait for a little longer.

I’ve promised myself that I will have the decks painted by the end of June, come Hell or high water. Finding a suitable compressor for the jobs was a bit of a problem. I needed something that will push a good amount of air and most units require either a gas-powered rig or a big high-volume electric unit. Turns out my brother had a nice Ingersoll-Rand electric compressor in his garage that was collecting dust.

I bought a small utility trailer and on one of my many doctors visits I dropped by my brother’s and got him to load it onto the trailer with his tractor’s bucket. It’s heavy enough that I will not be moving it by hand. With that on the trailer and a powerful gas generator (not enough electric service in the yard…), I should be in good shape. It also allows me to drag it to and from the boatyard and avoid having it go “walk-about” if it were left there.

Should do the trick:

Air pump

I’ve ordered two 50’ sections of Goodyear 3/8” air hose, a 3M PPS paint system and other painting sundries to allow me to start in on the decks. I already have a couple of serviceable spray guns.

With that taken care of I am going back to the yard and starting in the final sanding task, the cockpit. I purposely left that because I knew that I would be stomping all over that area and wanted to wait until last to get it prepped.

I’ve sanded the vertical gloss areas of the cockpit and am gradually working on removing all the non-skid. As I do this, I’ve been repairing nicks, voids, scratches and cracks. I figure on another 2-3 days of that sort of effort.

I’ve pulled most of the hatches off and will use them to practice painting and applying the non-skid. That taskt will happen behind my shed. That way when I really screw up no-one will see it and I can try it again...

Cockpit sanding:

Back to work

Sand and fair

Removing cockpit sole nonskid

There were a few areas that had some bad glasswork which created voids. Some quick work with the Dremel tool, some Awlfair, sanding and it should be good.

Grind it out.

Grinding bad layup

Voids in the layup

Well, despite the delay, it’s good to get back to work. Next up, ordering the paint...

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