A big milestone, the decks get the gloss paint.

I finished the taping and masking yesterday at 3:30 PM yesterday. Even though I was pressing to get the boat ready to paint today, part of the day was taken up with conferring with the rigger. He and his partner showed up at the yard around noon and we went over the mast. He’ll get back to me with options and pricing for the work. Which is just the way I like it. We traded boat disaster stories which is always fun.

Last of the taping.

After getting home I had some dinner and the spent the rest of the evening getting all my gear together for painting. This morning I went over to my friend’s house and picked up his generator.

Arriving at the boatyard around 9:00 AM  today I started laying out the materials and equipment. As I suspected, the shed ceiling was dripping with condensation and the decks were moist, to put it mildly. I set up a couple of fans to help with airflow and wiped all the surfaces with rags to speed drying.

Sill, it wasn’t until 10:30 that I could start in on the pre-paint deck prep. I vacuumed the decks for the millionth damn time, made a few quick repairs to taping mistakes  and then started in on the two-rag solvent wipe-down. After that it was time to mix up the Awlcraft 2000 and let it induct.

By the time I jacked the spray gun in and started at the bow, it was 12:30. I knew right then that I’d be finishing near sundown.

I started out pretty nicely. Easy to lay down the first coat with no problems. Man, I thought I was gonna breeze right through this job.

Yeah. No.

Started well...

What with the fact that I had to contort myself in weird positions without ever being able to stand up straight, my back started to spasm. Oh joy. Add in me wearing these damn booties that kept pulling off my feet and the quality and ease of the work began to fade. If I had a dollar for every time I looked down after stepping in fresh paint, well, you know...

Anyway, I kept at for for three passes. Finished up around 4:30, cleaned up the gun and policed the job site and that was that. Took a few photos in the dimming afternoon light and headed home as the front started to move through. I managed to get the paint on before the season shut me down.

I was pretty happy about that, getting a major task finished. Pumped really.

Next up is to take a day or two off, eat something other than chili or bean soup, meet my wife who’ll be coming back from three weeks in Barcelona. After that I’ll start in applying the non-skid paint areas.

Final product.

I’m going to take some better photos tomorrow. You know, the ones showing the shiny glossy paint. With the bugs and footprints in it...

 

Pushing to beat the cold front.

Looks like this coming Saturday will be D-Day for getting the gloss topcoat painted. Weather forecast for low to mid sixties followed by a cold front. I suspect that the cold front will finally signal the end of our warm weather.

I’m pushing pretty hard most days to get the taping and masking done. I figure that I’ll be done with that by Thursday evening, early Friday morning at the latest. That will give me Friday to do a final clean of the decks, clear away the area around the boat and get all the gear running and tested prior to shooting the Awlcraft on Saturday.

With the cooler nights every morning there is a fair amount of condensation dripping off the ceiling of the boat shed. Temperatures warm up pretty quickly once the sun is out so I should be able to safely start spraying by around 11:00 AM on Saturday.

There’s no cushion in my schedule but I’m confident that the first gloss coat will be on by Saturday afternoon. After that I can “leisurely” roll on the non-skid surfaces. Of course that involves more re-taping and masking those areas. Which is not a simple job as I’m finding out.

Some photos from the last three days.

Starting to tape the upper deck structures.

Spent all of today placing and outlining the hardware fitment.

For some reason I became concerned about some chips in the upper port side of the companionway entrance. I had ignored them because I mistakenly thought that the new teak surrounds that I made last winter in the shed would cover them. Nope.

I mixed up some Awlfair, slapped it on and put the heat lamp on it. It will get a basic fairing job which will not be ideal but will have to do. I can come back next Spring and fix it up as need be. 

Fitment looks okay.

Back at it early tomorrow.

If I never see another pinhole it will be too soon.

I’m trying to spend more time on the refit project especially with the favorable weather that we’re having. After getting back from the Dominican Republic I have redouble the final effort to put on the Awlquick primer and sand it in preparation for applying the topcoat.

I knew before leaving that there were some serious mistakes that I had made fairing nicks, gouges, cracks and glasswork in preparation for the gloss topcoat. The number of those mistakes were a bit depressing. Especially after I came back and and filled them with Awlfair. I sanded all the builtup fairing compound and applied more Awlfair, let that set up for a day and then sanded again. After doing this I mixed up another batch of Awlfair and spot sprayed.

Fix those cracks and scratches.

And lo and behold, more pinholes appeared. Some in areas that I thought I had fixed and some new ones. Frustrating.

Too tiny to see in the photo but they’re there.

One section of the port scupper drain showed another set of holes that had blown open next to an area that I filled. Closer investigation with a sharp knife revealed yet more glass layup failures. I should have really tested the entire length of the affected area to ensure that I repaired everything prior to spraying the primer.

Bad layup blown open.

The voids in the scupper drain required something more industrial. Out came the West System mixed with colloidal silica shoved into the opened cavities. This area would not be ready for sanding and painting within the day but I’ll just do that in the next day or so and “paint” that area with primer.

So, with just enough of the original gallon of primer left I tried a different tack with the pinholes. 3M Arcyl-White Glazing Putty. I should have used that earlier. It is easier to apply in small amounts and has the benefit of being ready for sanding after 30 minutes. I did a closer inspection of areas that I knew were suspect, smoothing on the glazing compound as I went. Sanding with 220 grit sandpaper was enough before painting.

Glazing compound. Should have used it sooner.

While waiting for those areas to set up I started in on final sanding the surfaces that will be painted with the gloss topcoat. I had already machine sanded the entire first primer coat on the decks with 320 grit sandpaper. The key to getting a nice finish with the Awlcraft 2000 is to final sand those areas using 3M Dry-Guide and more 320 grit sandpaper. Block sanding by hand.

Hand sanding the primer isn’t very hard and the results using the Dry-Guide are sublime but it does take time. I anticipate several days of that coming up.

Smoothing the surfaces.

Once the glazing compound set up and sanded I fired up the compressor, mixed the last of the Awlquick and applied covering coats.

More primer needed.

So, at the end of the day I am 99.99% done with applying Awlquick epoxy primer. Next installment, after I get back from four days of helping my brother and sister-in-law run a 3-day Endurance ride in Fort Valley I will finish the block sanding and start in on masking the non-skid and gloss patterns.

Covered.

 

So, where did I leave off?

Oh yeah, back to boat work.

I thought that with the fancy boat shed I would be able to get a fair amount done in the dead of winter. Not so much. A week in the Dominican Republic doing our regular medical mission volunteer work only to come back to the Great Mid-Atlantic Blizzard  and then quickly getting on a plane for another week and a half of sitting on a beach in Florida pretty much ruled that out.

February was just too stinking cold, windy and wet. All I did was check on the boat shed to make sure that it was still there and keeping Ronin dry. Which it was and did admirably.

I would occasionally fire up the heaters in my backyard shed and do some small woodwork and varnishing on the final odd pieces of the cabin sole. Tomorrow I will put a final satin finish coat on top of the last piece that goes on the v-berth step, wrap it in construction paper like the rest of the cabins sole, set aside and be done with that project task.

Last bit of cabin sole work:

Cabin soles ready to install in some future date...

The past two days have seen near record breaking warm temperatures here on the Chesapeake Bay so I, like many others in the boatyard, got back to work. The first day I did some administrative work, mostly thinking about what tasks to get started on this spring.  I did a quick survey of the mast and took notes for when I get together with a local rigger.

Another item that needs to get started is installing a small capacity bilge pump. I’ve pretty much decided to go with one of the new Whale Supersub Smart low-profile bilge pump. It is not intended to move large amounts of water, rather, to just keep the bilge dry during normal conditions. I worked up a quick wooden mockup to ensure that it would fit in my small, narrow bilge. The good news is that it should fit nicely. I was concerned that it might not fit with the keel bolts.

Replace with the real deal.

I have not done any sanding or prep work in the cockpit for the upcoming deck painting because I knew that it would be a high traffic area. A lot of dirt and grit gets carried onto the boat so I wanted to wait until the last moment to start in on the task. I have spent quite a bit of time worrying about having a soft balsa core in the cockpit and that I would need to completely rebuild that area.

I spent some time sounding the entire cockpit sole in minute detail today. My ears a still ringing from that effort. But, the really good news is that there is no wet or rotten balsa. Both the sounding and a visual inspection from underneath verified that it is strong. That was a great relief and means that I can “save” at least a month’s worth of work that would have been required to replace the core and fiberglass.

Solid.

I will need to seal the aft-most two openings that carried the throttle and shift cables when I install the new Edson Classic pedestal that is in the shed. Amazingly the core that was exposed around the holes drilled in the cockpit sole was dry and solid.

Quick verification.

While I was at it I applied more AwlFair to the old cockpit/quarter-berth opening on both sides. Standard apply and sand off process. A previous owner had slapped a gob of filler of some sort on the aft bulkhead and it kept bugging me so I sanding it down and faired it too.  I should be done with this job in the next few days.

Pastels:

And since I was on a roll, I started to think about doing something with the area underneath the port side of the cockpit driver’s seat. It may have been an option from the factory to put a hinged lid over some sort of storage like  the propane locker on the starboard side but on my boat is was simply glued downed.

So, using tools that usually get me in trouble, I decided to investigate. Fifteen minutes later I had my answer.

Not subtle.

C&C “stuff:"

I’m going to work up some sort of storage underneath this. Most likely a removable soft pocket of some sort. TBD.

Looks like an one-hole outhouse...

Oh, and I did some Frostbite racing in Annapolis last weekend and yesterday put on some shorts and went sailing with my good friend and home builder Vincent on his Corsair 24. Fun.

Early start.

Getting the bilge ready.

I’ve been mostly working on small things for the refit, finishing odd pieces of the cabin sole that need special attention, applying the final coats of satin finish over the coats of gloss AwlWood to the large cabin sole sections. When those were complete I wrapped them in construction paper and put them up for storage in shed.

The Butler skiff had been sitting on sawhorses at the Railway. I decided that rather than splash it, drag it back to the slip and worry about keeping it floating over the winter that I would just store it there. The yard owner fell 6 feet of a strong-back the broke and was out of commission for a week or so. This week we moved the boat, flipped it over and I wrapped that up for the winter too.

All it needs is a nice red bow.

Before Christmas I spent some time cleaning the bilge. Originally I thought that I could get it ready to paint by simply scrubbing the 33 years of crud using household cleaners and a stiff brush. I was disabused of that idea pretty quickly. So, my fallback method was to bring out the heavy equipment. The power washer. I picked a day that was raining, put on old foul-weather gear and after cleaning with Simple Green and letting it work a bit, I started in.

Not a job to be taken lightly. I blew crud and crap all over the boat. But, it did the trick. There was dirt, dust, old stainless steel hardware and fiberglass bits that came out of every crevice in the hull. I crawled down into the cockpit locker and cleaned the seldom seen areas around and behind the rudder and quadrant. It took 3 days just to dry out properly. 

After that I spent 3 days sanding, grinding and scrapping old paint and caulk. Another afternoon spent washing all the surfaces with thinner and I was pretty much ready to go. I took one day to tape up all hoses, lines and exposed surfaces.

Today I donned my Tyvek coveralls and went to work with rollers and brushes. Not an easy job because I had to spend most of my time on my knees and bent over. At the end of the day I had one coat applied.

Getting started.

First coat on and drying.

I may have mentioned in another post about the interesting boats in this yard. A “unique” sailboat showed up a week ago. I was intrigued and walked around it admiring it for a good 15 minutes before it dawned on me what it was. A “modified” Cal 25. I used to own and race one in Annapolis. Stunning.

Years ago I was fortunate to be able to do a tour of a Cal 40 being completely rebuilt and upgraded for racing with the late designer Bill Lapworth. He was firm about the reasons for some of his design elements and felt that changing them might be a bit of overkill. He would not have approved of this change.

Somewhere in Heaven Bill Lapworth is weeping...

'Glassing in the quarterberth port

Thanksgiving with my family and a few doctors visits. Just part of the schedule when trying to get time to work on the boat. All of those events took me away from Reedville for several days. Driving to and from Washington, D.C. can be tiresome. And I will be going back in a few days for some minor out-patient surgery.

In-between the interruptions I continued work on filling in the old round port providing ventilation to the quarter berth. I cut up some layers of 17 oz. biaxial cloth to fit the diameter of the opening and epoxied them in place. From there I used the plastic template I had created some days earlier to cut up successive layers of 6 oz. woven cloth. These were epoxied into place until the entire area was built up.

Plug it and cover it.

Yes, still more wetting out to be done...

Pro tip: don’t use paper or tape for the epoxy overrun. The epoxy just ignores it and sets up on the glass anyway. And I knew that prior to taping it up. Dummy at work yet again...

I put a heat lamp on the whole thing and let it set up for the day.

The next day I came back and started in on sanding the hardened epoxy. After a quick wash to remove the amine blush I did a a couple of passes with the 5” grinder and the 6” sander. Despite my weak fiberglassing skills the layup was nice and fair with virtually no high spots that needed working down.

Ready for AwlFair.

I grabbed the vacuum to remove any dust and then washed the entire area with acetone. After mixing up a batch of AwlFair and troweling it on, I was done with that for the day.

I love AwlFair...

I took a quick trip to the bow and sanded the last AwlFair application near the forward part of the anchor locker and it is ready for priming when that occurs next Spring.

Done enough.

When I came back next I discovered the limitations of PeelPly. I had considered just using plastic between the wood backing plate and the epoxy buildup. I should have.

The wooden plug was firmly fixed in place. If it had been in a more accessible location it would have been fairly easy to remove. It was not.

So, breaking out the “Wonder Tool", my Fein Multimaster I was able to cut and pry the plug out in small bits. Ultimately it was notas onerous a task as I had envisioned.

Bits and pieces.

 

And since I had it ready I changed the blade and chopped off the wooden dowels I used to plug the old winch holes on the cabin top near the cockpit when filling them with epoxy.

Eh, no one will see it.

After some sanding with the 6” Mirka DA and some of board filing I applied another skim coat of AwlFair.

Break out the heat lamp again.

Filling and fairing never seems to end.

I awoke this morning to the sound of rain beating on our metal roof. There are times when it is a comforting tattoo that signifies a quiet day of coffee in bed, catching up on the goings-on the world (via the Internet...) and finding some small chores around the house to work on.

Not today.

I rolled out of bed early, put on boat-yard clothes, grabbed some breakfast, checked the NYT and then started to load the yard-truck with the required tools for the day's effort. I did a quick run down the street to check in with George Butler to make sure the skiff was covered and dry. Check.

Next stop was “Ronin”. Despite being a dismal drizzly and rainy day the temperatures were in the mid-sixtes. I unloaded tools and set up the work table. The goal was to sand off more AwlFair compound, check for imperfections and continue on the iterative process of getting the decks ready for priming and painting.

Grey day.

First thing was to identify those spots that needed sanding and more filler. I grabbed my new LED work light and went around the decks hand sanding the smaller spots. I had filled the hardware holes a few days earlier with West System epoxy and a little bit of micro-fiber filler. At the same time I worked some AwlFair into low areas and scratch marks.

Plugged and some fairing.

Wooden dowels to stop the epoxy leaks.

After that I spent some time working the board file on the cabin-top near the cockpit to get the area fair. Still not done yet but getting there.

Before and after:

Up front in the bow there was an area that had a bad layup and probably some hits that destroyed the deck where the anchor line ran. I had worked up a couple of applications of West System with microfibers to build it up. I machine and hand sanded the buildup.

Ugly epoxy layup.

Sanded, faired and AwlFair applied.

The next effort for the day was to prep the old quarter-berth hole for patching. I measured the opening, adding a few inches to the diameter of the backing plate. I cut the backing plate out of some scrap wood that I had lying around the shed but quickly found out that the gap between the hull and cabin liner was pretty tight.

Where’s my compass when I need it?

I ran the 2” pneumatic sander along the edges of the filler plate to make if fit. The problem was that it was thicker than than the opening available to me. Next step, fit it.

When I went to put it in place,the plug didn't even begin to slide into place. So, since I was going to have do some glass-work to finish off the ragged hole at the base of the quarter-berth I cut it away at the interior liner. 

 

After getting the plug to fit I wrapped it with Peel-Ply and maneuvered  it in.

Ready for epoxy.

The day was getting on and I decided to wait until the next session to finish the repair. I’ve learned to never rush a task.