Another mixed bag of events this week. I discovered that the water pump was going out on the car, and the Subaru dealer didn't have time to mess with it for a few days and a lot of dollars. Being stranded in California traffic with a boiled over car is not on the bucket list. I decided to just do it myself in the driveway, so that we would not be stranded in Marin without transport. Like all projects, there are possible complications, and the first one was a stomach virus which had me mostly idle for 3 days and feeling poorly for several more. Of course when I got up and about, I didn't quite have all the parts needed, and the project didn't go quite as projected. By Wednesday, I decided that waiting another day for Leonard to bring me a gasket or such, or taking a cab to the dealer, was getting to be too much trouble, so we rented a car, a Nissan Versa, not bad at all for a cheapo car.The local auto parts place had the parts for less than half what Subaru wanted, which more than covered the cost of a rental. Only problem was on Friday, we drove down mid day to pick up the parts and put the car back together, but they ordered in the wrong part. Being organized is a challenge when no one else is. One of the parts I had to get is a timing belt tensioner, which is a little gizmo with a hydraulically loaded piston which you compress in a vise and pin in place. When you get everything in place you release the pin and the piston comes out an applies tension to the belt. In a perfect world
maybe, mine just sat there when I let it out. It is of course the last step in the sequence, but I am getting pretty good at setting the timing, so doing it all over again should be a snap.
Hard to get much prose going about cleaning, sanding and organizing the decks. We have been mostly learning about paint, why the old paint job failed, and what to do with the new one. We still have not come to grips with the paint, but the more we look, the more it seems like the bold orange will be the one. The boat had a Linear Polyurethane coating, which is a two part paint which links together into a single sheet of hard shiny polyurethane when it cures. Very durable, keeps its color well and lasts about 10 years if you don't beat it up too much. Trouble is the designer brand costs about $800 a gallon, though off brands can be had for as little as $350, and I am not sure we are qualified to do it justice. If you don't do a perfect job of prepping and applying it, it is all for naught. It all needs to be applied in a single application so that as it links up together, you get one complete covering with no seams, overlaps, or other interruptions.
The alternative is single part urethane, or enamel. We don't see the single part in an acceptable color, so we will probably go with a modified urethane alkyd enamel. It's nice and shiny and will look nice for a couple of years. It can also be touched up in small areas as needed, ie. when the lobster fisherman bonks into us with a panga while selling us a lobster. The paint is really about protecting the boat from the sun and sea, more than about winning a beauty contest. We expect to have the boat hauled for a bottom job every couple of years, and expect to be some place where they actually earn what you pay them. I feel good about boosting a third world local economy having my paint refreshed. The yard charges $95/hour here for worker bees, but I got a feeling they only get about 12-15 of it. Seems like everyone in America is pricing themselves out of the market these days. With the cost of paint and the amount of hours at that rate, a paint job could cost 10-20 thousand dollars, I had no idea my efforts could be so richly rewarded.
It appears that there were a couple of problems with the prior paint job. The vendor of the original paint speculated that the epoxy primer was allowed to cure for too long before the paint on one side was applied and should have been sanded again. On another spot, he said it could have been that the 2 part paint was not allowed to sit mixed long enough to be ready to go on when they applied it, or it was too cold. The inside of the starboard ama has little blisters which did not adhere to the primer, and had to be completely removed. This was allegedly the result of being sprayed on a day with too much humidity trapping little bubbles of water in the paint which later evaporate leaving tiny bubbles.
When I asked the prior owner about the paint job, he said "You know what the weather is like in Vancouver, it's about impossible to get enough perfect weather to do a project this size." Sigh, likely true, and I don't expect perfect weather here either. Probably won't be too cold though. So far it has been terribly hot most of the time. They are expecting an arctic or alaska front to dump a lot of rain in the next couple of days, so it is touch and go, but good enough sanding weather for now.
All in all we are trying to learn from the past and the main focus for now is to get all the paint which is not stuck well, off the boat, rough up all that remains and get a good coat of two part epoxy primer on the whole thing. We will be able to apply the paint in whatever amount we can manage and do as many batches as it takes, weather permitting. The first trial with the current paint selection was done with the surface still too warm, even though the air temperature had fallen, so it didn't have time to self level, or smooth itself. Sounds like good advice, the guy next door paints his own cars.
I expect to be sanding for several more days but it is a strangely satisfying task, as you can measure your progress clearly as you go. When the sanding is done, ie. I get really tired of messing with it, we will get a really good primer coat on the whole boat. This will seal the boat, make sure everything sticks to everything and even out some of the surface imperfections.
We can then apply paint every time the weather is passable, and we should be done in the next 10-14 days. Or whenever, as we have no calendar on board, and don't have to be anywhere till we want to.
