Just gotta sweat.

Well, I’ve not had much to post in some time. The weather here on the East Coast has been brutal. A prolonged heat-wave for most of the time. It has been just too hot to work on the boat, either in the boat shed or at my shed.

Which provided me with enough of an excuse to go ride to Ohio and fly out to San Diego and ride my bike in Northern California. Where it was just as hot or hotter. But, “it’s a dry heat…”.

Since the last post I have, over a period of weeks, sprayed the Awlgrip High Build Epoxy primer on the hatches. After letting it cure I sanded with 220 and 320 grit sandpaper prior to bringing out the topcoat. After cleaning the surfaces I masked and taped the non-skid areas in preparation for spraying.

It took awhile but there was finally a morning where the temperatures were in the mid-80’s. I mixed up a small amount of Awlcraft 2000 Matterhorn White and set it aside. After doing the two-rag wipe down of the surfaces I started to spray the exposed gloss surfaces.

The results were okay. There was a minor amount of orange-peel, a couple of sags which I was able to polish out and some small areas where the paint did not flow out enough.

After researching it and showing it my to friend who painted the hull, it is almost certainly the result of too little air-pressure at the gun and not enough material flow.

A week later I re-taped and masked over the gloss coat and prepped the exposed non-skid areas. This time I used a roller to apply the first coat. After about 10 minutes I “salted” the area with a 50/50 mix of fine and coarse Griptex. After letting that sit for about 30 minutes I removed any excess Griptex with air pressure and rolled on a second coat of Awlcraft 2000. Another “Salting” with the Griptex mixture to get an even distribution of particles. After another 30 minute wait and excess Griptex removal I rolled on the third and final coat of Awlcraft.

The non-skid areas came out pretty nice. Just the right amount of grip but not too rough.

Prep work.

Painting.

Finished products.

And trial fitting...

  

Now I wait for a break in the weather to start in on the deck. Looks like September...

Things that shift deadlines.

Well, it’s pretty clear that I view deadlines as movable moments.

I haven’t worked on the boat in any real fashion since last August. Even those work sessions were less than highly productive.

My wife took an apartment in Barcelona, Spain for a month starting the last week of August. I flew in on the 1st of September and proceeded to eat and drink my way through the city for the next three weeks. It was my second time there and it is still a wonderful city to visit. A young Marine friend of mine and I rented a couple of Ducati Scramblers and spent two days leaning into turns in the Pyrenees and the Costa Brava. A superb time and a great ride.

After all that I came back, spent four days making sure that things were in order and then took off for a week in Top Sail Beach, NC for my 45th high school reunion. No, I didn’t go to school in North Carolina. Canadian Academy in Kobe, Japan actually but one of the hosts of the reunion live in Top Sail Beach now and it became the destination for the class. Easier to drive to than Kobe...

Came back home from the reunion, checked on the house and cats and then my wife and I flew to Santiago, Dominican Republic for our annual medical mission work. Another week of no progress on “Ronin."

Now I’m getting back to work.

Last week I finished off sanding all the non-skid that was butting up to the base of the toe-rail as the final effort on the deck. Using the Fein Multitool with 80-grit sanding pads worked fairly well. As I was doing this I made a note to run a strip of gloss (non non-skid?) along that edge instead of running non-skid right up to the bottom edge of the toe-rail. Should be easier to shoot and a better look for the finished product. As part of the sanding process I noted that pretty much all deck surfaces were non-skid and I made a note to not re-apply it in areas that have bolts and sealant like I found under the chainplates and jib-track.

80-grit works quite well:

After that final bit of effort I spent close to a full day vacuuming and cleaning the decks and interior to remove copious amounts of gelcoat dust that was blown in. When I do my next boat refit project I’ll make sure to tape up the ports and openings. No, wait, what am I saying? I will never, ever do another refit….

A light dusting, that’s all really...

 

Today I loaded up the tool truck with my Makita compressor and a new Ingersoll-Rand 2”/3” high speed sander and drove to the boat.

After getting the air-hose led and tool attached I started grinding out the small, hairline cracks that were present on the deck. Most were around the stanchion bases and radiating out from the edges of the fixed ports. There were scratches and gouges from previous work that I had done. Edges and corners that had grooves work by halyards that had run directly across them without any edge protection had grooves down the glass. There were divots from old halyard winches on the deck that had been removed and given a quick fill by previous owners that needed a fairing prior to primer and paint.

Chicken pox.

The fixed ports required special attention. There were significant spider cracks radiating from the edges in addition to the inner surface that the port glues to that needing fairing compound.

Never looked nice from the day we got the boat.

It was messy and I was not doing my best work. The upside is that the AwlFair is easy to sand after setting up so the overall level of effort isn’t much. I tend to under-apply filling and fairing compound and then have to re-fair at least one more time, often several. I’m not efficient that way...

Mix Part A to equal amount of Part B...

The stern edge of the cockpit coaming had some fiberglass voids that needed work. A couple of passes with a very large amount of fairing compound was in order.

Before...

and semi-after….

When the fairing application work was done, I still had an hour to go for the day.  Last week I did some research on Lewmar opening ports and decided that I would go with a Lewmar Atlantic 30 port to replace the miserable old round screw-in port that ostensibly provided air to the quarter-berth. After making a template to insure that it would fix, I started in on readying that area for the new port. First thing is to glass in the old opening.

Bringing out my trusty DeWalt small grinder I worked out a rough 12:1 radius surface grind. Later this week I’ll glass it it.

More before and after.

Anyway, back to sanding. But only after I get back from taking one of our cats back to Maryland in the middle of the week for some vet work at my sister-in-law and brother’s veterinary practice. 

There goes that deadline again...

Also, too. Holiday snaps:

The Zen of sanding.

So, precious little work on the boat over the last eight weeks.

I spent a few days delivering my buddy’s Sabre 426 to Rhode Island. The trip was the quickest delivery along that route that I have ever done. Fast, flat and dry. May be bringing her back next week.

The next few weeks were taken up with family and friends. My wife and I had dinner with close friends at The Inn in Little Washington. My first experience there and it was superlative.

I spent a fair amount of time (and money…) prepping my two Ducati motorcycles for a long planned ride of the Rockies in Colorado and New Mexico. After getting those sorted I drove to Denver, met my old and close friend Jim and we rode for three days. After the ride was over he loaded my Ducati ST2 into his pickup and drove it back to his garage in San Diego where it resides, waiting for me to fly in and ride the West Coast with him. Looking forward to that.

Lost in Kansas:

After getting back I started to sand the decks of Ronin, starting with the non-skid areas. Before I did that though I had to finish cleaning out the hardened Plexus material in the frames of the fixed ports. Not an easy or as a quick a job as it turned out. Took severals days of sanding, chipping and grinding. Those inner frame surfaces will be getting some epoxy work sometime in the future.

Tenacious:

We’ve been having a fair amount of heat here on the Mid-Atlantic, high 80’s F to low 90’s F. I was concerned about the temperatures when working on the boat but have been pleasantly surprised with the working conditions. With an early start, several fans blowing directly towards me and a breeze that generally flows through the structure I’ve been able to work fairly comfortably. On the really high heat and humidity days I’ve pretty much downed tools, cleaned up the site and headed for home around 3:30 PM. Despite the expense, the decision to purchase the shelter was an extremely good move.

I’ve started at the bow and am working my way aft along the port side removing all the non-skid. The gloss areas, primarily vertical, will get sanded on the second pass. Right now I’m sanding away with an assortment of sanders, my old trusty Porter-Cable 7336 dual-action sander with Gold Sikit P80 sheets slapped on. For some of the tighter areas I’ve been using my Porter-Cable 333 DA sander with hook-and-loop P60 Norton discs. I’ve done some sanding with my new Mirka 12VDC sander with some aggressive sanding disks but I’m concerned that it may be a bit fragile for long-term use. We’ll see. It’s a really nice tool and I expect that for finer sanding of some areas and the primer it will be the go-to sander. I’ve been rolling through twenty-five to thirty discs per day.

It’s all about dust control...

Removing the West System Low Density filler used to plug the holes in the deck:

Jennings Boatyard is putting up a web-site and asked me for some action and before-and-after photos of the work on Ronin. I was happy to oblige so we’ll see if she shows up in the future. Hope so, the yard has been a great place to have a boat project.