More yard work and a diversion

Managed to get most of the sides ready for primer and went at it for a couple of days. The primer is a 2 part epoxy and must be mixed in small batches to prevent it setting up prior to all of it going on. This also means that once you start putting a batch on there is no stopping as all of the rollers, trays, etc. will be hard epoxy in an hour or so.

 

We finshed off a gallon of primer and decided that it was too late to get started mixing another and continuing. The primer is a high solids type which is very thick and difficult to mix. The base must be mixed thoroughly, the activator must also be mixed thouroughly and then the two must me mixed together. The two parts are more than 50% solids, so initial mixing is a long slow process. When we have the rest of the sides prepared, we will finish the front and ama on the starboard side. We felt like we were due for a little break at this point, so we took a little train trip on Amtrak.

We went to Denver by train and visited my sister Denyse in the mounains north west of Denver. Saw some elk and other wildlife, but mostly wanted our bodies to recuperate for a bit. The train trip was pretty nice, we got a sleeper cabin and had all our meals served in the dining car as part of the deal. it took a day and a half to get there, but we were all about relaxing at that point. The trip back was by air, and of course they cancelled our flight for mechanical reasons and set us up in a hotel for the night. Next day bright and early we made the trip home without further incident.

We returned to the boat yard somewhat rejuvenated and decided to paint the final coat on the inside surface of the amas, and complete the deck repair.

I finished the glasswork on the front deck and faired it a bit. It is now ready for some primer, so we will gear up for that in the next couple of days. I am in the process of making a template of the front of the deck so that I can have the bow roller extended to attach the head stay chainplate at the front instead of bolting it throough the deck. the forward end will extend off the bow. The main source of the deck rot was poor sealing of the bolt holes for the cleat and the roller, so no holes = no leaks. Have also begun replacing the front hatch, as it is huge and rotten and faces aft, which will be no good for ventilation in warmer climes. I have a regular boat hatch which is smaller and lighter and as the added benefit of not being rotten. I have removed the frame for the old hatch and will be attaching stringers to fit the new one along with some plywood to fill the gaps.

More Yard Work

As is usually the case, the forward motion on the paint job has caused reverse motion on the overall project. While preparing the front deck for paint Joan came across a soft spot on the deck and as is usually the case with soft spots, it turned out to be a section of rotten deck. After a few tries to section it off, it became apparent that the best solution would be a single patch of the whole area, rather than a few small ones, near each other.

This section contains the anchor roller, the bow pulpit, and the chain plates for the head stay, so it all came off and a new section of deck was purchased in the form of a sheet of 3/8 " marine plywood. Some trimming and fitting, and the new section of deck can be epoxied and fitted to the front. Because of the radius curve of the deck, I need to come up with some weights to put on top of it when we attach it to the hull and bulkheads with epoxy bog. After that sets up I will sand the edges to the contour of the rest of the deck, remove the paint from the hulls in that area and lay fiberglass over the deck lapped onto the hulls.

Not really too difficult, but still a diversion. Within every setback is an opportunity to make more work for the team, hopefully with commensurate rewards. We have never been fond of the anchor roller arrangement, and it was attached to the rotting section of the deck and had to be removed.

The stainless roller is attached to a sheet of 3/8" aluminum plate, which is glued to a piece of 1" plywood, which is then glued and bolted to the deck. Crude, but effective, if the decks don't rot. Had this section come apart at anchor, it could have been most inconvenient, as well as pretty destructive to the bow of the boat.

This arrangement with the roller forward by the head stay and the windlass back behind the hatch has several awkward features. The roller cannot be lined up with the windlass from anywhere else on deck. The chain between the roller and the windlass (round winch thingy by the hatch) lays on deck when you are sailing and beats the paint to death on deck. The windlass has a deck pass through feature to allow you to store the chain and rode below decks, but because it is right on the side of the hull, it is not self stowing. That is to say that the rode just bunches up along the hull side until it gets in the way of the incoming rode and gets all jammed up, making someone go up forward and untangle it. The large gray hatch is massively heavy and has rotten wood along the sides which needs repair, as well as the black coamings added to protect it from sea water entry take up a great deal of space. I will be removing all of that, replacing some more deck and mounting a smaller hatch which should drop some weight off the front of the boat and free up a lot of deck space up there.  The current thought process is to build a water tight box under the new section of deck, mount the windlass in the center with access to the locker on deck and make it self draining out the side of the boat. We want to be able to raise and lower the anchor from the cockpit without anyone doing any more than pushing a button. This should allow a bit more freedom in roller placement and make it all neater and easier to use.

We will be doing this stuff in a parallel effort with the painting of the rest of the topsides and it should not be too much of an impact on the painting until the final coat is ready to go on.

Back on Task

Well, we finally made it back out to California after a long and eventful winter in Fl and Costa Rica. We decided to look into some medical issues and after perusing our options in the US as uninsured, we needed more options. Decided to go to Costa Rica and check out the medical tourism on Joans feet which were having a lot of pain in the big toe joints. It would cost about half as much to get them fixed in Costa Rica including the travel and lodging. While there, I had her orthopedic surgeon look at my shoulder and ended up getting my rotator cuff re-built. Also talked to a spinal surgeon about some nerve damage I was having in my leg. We stayed for about 6 weeks to get both surgeries and some recovery time and then back to Fl for some Physical Therapy for my shoulder. When the PT guy said I was mobilized to full range, we decided to go get my back fixed. In two weeks you will feel like new was the lead in, but the follow up was more like, much more needed doing than we had planned. It went well, just more pain and suffering than we envisioned. I was just glad to be up and about. Two weeks later we were back in FL packing for CA.

Arrived in CA the first week in June and found the boat miraculously pretty much as we had left it except for a few million spider nests and their leavings.  We spend a week getting a little organized and started back in prepping for some more paint work a week later. After two weeks, we have made some progress, but it is much slower than we had anticipated. I am babying my shoulder and back and it is amazing how debilitating laying around for a few months can be to your ability to stay in motion for any period of time. We sanded the primed amas and painted three sides, refining the technique each pass. By the time we are done we will know how to paint, but we will also know better than to do it again.

The painting process is long and involved, beginning with the removal of  all the bad paint from the last paint job. That is mostly what occupied our last time here. Once the old paint is removed or smoothed out, we have to go over everthing with fine sand paper to prepare for the primer coat. After it is all sanded, we wipe it all down with a solvent to remove any foreign chemicals like wax or soap.
Some times it takes a couple of passes to get a dust free surface.
We then coat the surface with a two part epoxy primer to ensure that we have something stuck to the boat to put the paint on. Since we roll this on, it is a fairly rough surface which must then be completely sanded and cleaned again prior to the actual application of the paint.
The paint is pretty much a repeat of all the other layers, tempered by the learning curve of how much to thin the paint to get even coverage, not run and not be so thin as to require too many coats. We will then fine sand the first coat, clean it all up again, and apply the final coat.
So far, we have a good coat on both sides of the amas, and have sanded 3 of the four surfaces to prepare for the final coat. We have decided to do the outer side of the amas last, as this is the most visible part of the boat and we hope to use our most developed skill set on that part.
At present we are preparing the starboard side of the main hull and akas for primer and hope to apply it tomorrow. Every days progress is dependent on the weather, how much activity there is in the yard around us, and how our bodies are holding up. Every couple of days we just schedule a down day on the bay to recuperate.
Looking at the progress so far, we will be sanding a couple of ama surfaces for a day each, prepping and painting them possibly in one day, and a lot more of the same for the main hull and akas.
The weather is pretty good here, cool nights and warm afternoons most days. Each day brings a little better conditioning to the paint crew, so maybe we'll be rocking and rolling before long. After three weeks, we are both feeling much better, but still a ways to go for me.
Sadly, it cannot all be moving forward at the desired pace. While preparing the starboard side for painting, I found a rotten spot in the surface of the deck and will have to replace a section of deck before we can finish the painting. It should be simple, but everything is before you get really involved in it. With any luck at all, I will just cut out the bad section, replace it with a similar piece of marine plywood, glass it, fair it with a little filler, and prime over it, etc.

Moving Right Along,,, or Not

   Been kinda slow of late. Put the car together, timing belt tensioner slipped and seems to have caused the valves to hit a piston and  bend a bit. I have been spending a bit too much time on this car, which is diverting me from the boat project. Since you have to pull this engine to get the head off, I think I have gone as far as I am willing to go with this project. Put and ad in craigslist and sold it to the first caller for about half of what I had paid for it. An acceptable compromise to get back on track. I had always worried that when we sold the car it would be a problem in California to get it smog certified, so give up the problems and move on.

    Finished the mast, and stepped it without incident. We decided to leave it bare aluminum and the appearance is quite a change from the former black. It all went well and I just have to hook all the wiring up( rainy day project, must make paint while the sun shines).
    Doing some of the final bits of sanding when I came across what appeared to be a 2" x 5" soft spot on the cabin side. As I cut out the wet plywood, it became apparent that there was a lot of wet wood in there.

 Finally found dry stuff all round, but it turned into a hole about 1 foot by 6 feet. Not the end of the world, but a bit of a bubble in the pert chart. Filled the gap with a sheet of structural foam, and glassed and filled it in place.

 No chance of more rot now, too bad the whole boat is not foam glass, perhaps it will be before I am done.
    Made an insert for the dagger board exit. Kind of a challenge since the profile of the board is perpendicular, while the exit is slanted. So I had to project the profile a few inches longer and elongate the shape to still fit the board at an angle.

 Looks pretty good, but not attached to the boat yet. As boat things go this is just one more interesting challenge, as the reason for the plastic insert is to eliminate turbulence, fix the position of the board and provide a near frictionless bearing surface for the board to slide up and down on. The frictionless part means that you cannot use any type of adhesive to attach it, as nothing sticks to it. Current theory is that I will make a fiberglass lip around the bottom of the dagger board case and screw through it into the plastic.
    We have made some progress in the paint department, but as usual, two steps forward and one back. As we prepared the top of the starboard aka for primer, all the paint wanted to flake off. Sigh, once more with feeling. Not a big deal, but another day or two lost from painting.

 Finally got the two amas and a bit of the front akas primed, but the weather window is getting pretty short these days.  It has been getting down near freezing every night, but up to about 60 in the day time. The painters say that you can work for about 2 hours painting if you are well organized. At that rate, it will be a month before we get the paint on, and that will be well into the rainy season. Having spent 5 prior winters in the bay area, I have no desire to sit freezing in the rain wishing spring would hurry up. It also seems that I have a torn rotator cuff and will need to give my shoulder a break.

    After considerable discussion, we decided to store the boat in the yard until the weather improves( ie springtime). The coldest winter storm in Tampa is about like a normal winter day in Napa. Should we have finished the painting and other jobs, it would be late in the season for the passage south. The winter storms are rough offshore and we aren't up for it. To put the boat in a slip would also be hazardous due to winter storms and also cost about 3 times as much as the yard. Joan's father set us up with some wheels and we elected to head for Florida.
   Made it to Florida ate turkey and probably won't have any Hot sauce updates for the rest of winter.

Life on the Hard

Sitting on the dock of the bay, or at least on the bench at the boathouse in Marin, drinking coffee, checking out the ship traffic.
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.

We had the mast pulled off Friday before driving down. One more of those scary, yet exciting moments. You don't know what it is really like up there until it is down here. Everything looks good so far, what works is working well, and what doesn't looks easily replaced. The other two masts I have rebuilt both required a lot more work than this one. Gives Joan a Little easier project than sanding the hulls. Sanding is all about using the grit in the sandpaper to rub the paint and stuff off, so if you are big and strong you can hold the sander steady and transfer most of the work to the finish, if you are not so big and strong, you get vibrated around a lot and the paint scoffs at your efforts. As usual, I get the gorilla job and Joan gets the fine detail one. Keeps us all occupied and moving along.

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.

The Haulout

On Friday. We moved the boat up to Napa Valley Marina for haulout. I took the boat up alone and Joan drove the car.

This boatyard is on the Napa river up above San Pablo Pay near Napa, Ca. The trip was uneventful, and I was tied at there dock by about 1 pm. Mike, the yard supe, looked the boat over and had me move it around to the hauling dock. They used a hydraulic trailer to do the haulout. The trailer has stands which can be raised and lowered, so they roll the trailer down the ramp and float the boat onto it. When it is all lined up, they raise the stands on the trailer to lift the boat above the level of the ground below the trailer and use a tractor to pull it out, and into the yard.

They then pressure wash all the cooties off the bottom and move it to a spot in the yard where it is set up on blocks and stands. I am quite pleased with how fair and clean the bottom is. We have spent a great deal of time on other boats, just trying to smooth the bottom out and get all the flakey paint off, not so much this time.

The next morning, we set to work. Joan removes the vinyl lettering from the hulls with a heat gun, and I remove the sails, tramps and remaining winches that we no longer need. We also removed the side curtains from the dodger for the first time. The top is probably above the dirt line, so it stays and I fashion an awning for a little shade. It gets up around 90 in the afternoon and some shade will be appreciated. We will now try to sand the decks and hulls to remove any loose paint and fill any gaps so that the new paint will stay put. Planning to have the mast pulled off in a few days so we can clean it up and run some wires and such.

Brutally hot for the last 2 days, 96 each day, they say it is dry, but the nws sez its 80% humidity and we are wilting in it. More of the paint is coming off the sides than we had wanted, but no one who has done this before should be too surprised. Tried a test patch of some new paint, but it failed in oh so many ways, didn't end up shiney, didn't cover in 1 coat, and wasn't orange, too bold.

Time to figure something else out.

Paradise, at Last

Paradise Cay anyway, made it through the gate and over to the dock at the marina on Wednesday. After leaving Eureka early Monday morning, we had a long calm motor down the coast. More of the usual, wind dead behind us at about 8-10 knots enough to sail fast back and forth, but slow straight downwind. Not wanting to spend any extra nights out, we just motored.
About 12 miles north of Point Reyes, I saw a spout and a fin in the distance. More scouting about revealed more spouts and fins amid cheers of "thar she blows".



 Got near a few pods, but had a hard time timing the photos. As soon as you think you have a shot, you push the button on the phone and they dive. We saw a group dead ahead, and mused about whether to take evasive action, but decided they always go away before we get near. This time it was the biggest group of the day and they held their ground pretty well. Next time I will just shoot video, as the still shots, just didn't come near the reality. Got to see lots of babies, probably only 20 or 30 feet long and several adults from about 50-100 feet away.
It was pretty foggy, not pea soup but probably less than a mile of visibility. With no ship traffic and not much to see, it becomes just some tiresome staring into the void. Rounded Point Reyes and found a void in the fog for a couple of miles, but plenty down toward the bridge and lots following us around and over the point. Entered Drakes Bay, and headed up toward the spot we had picked on the chart, only to see a familiar boat, "Velella Velella" anchored there.

 They were next to us in Port Townsend for a week or so doing the same drill as us, getting ready to sail away. As we settled in, Rob, the owner came on deck and yelled " Yahoo we made it" and "welcome Hot Sauce". They had arrived just an hour earlier, although they left about 5 days before us. Velella Velella is a traditional long keel heavy ketch, comfortable at sea, but not known for fast passages. Probably the finest example of Ingrid 38 we have ever seen. A lot of love and labor went in this boat. Rob said he had expected us to come roaring by the whole trip, but they had pretty much the same weather we had, much slow sailing punctuated by a gale. They went into Bodega bay to lick their wounds while we sat at Eureka. They probably got to bob around for several more days before going in.

Next day, the sun started to burn off the fog by about 10 and it was pretty clear by noon. We set sail and made for the gate. We wanted to get through before the fog descended again around 3 or 4 pm. Had to give up sailing after an hour or so as the winds lightened again. When we got close to the gate, we had to drop the sails because it was near calm and they were just flopping around noisily and in the way. About 10 minutes after we came under the bridge, the wind came up suddenly to 20-25 knots. Timing is everything and ours was weak that day.

We hoisted sail and blasted across the bay a couple of times before heading into the marina at about 6. I eagerly await the new sails, as the old main is so bagged out that it seemed to mostly press the ama down instead of propelling us forward.  Kind of like the difference between a fan blade and a clothesline, one spins, the other just pulls.

We are settled in for a little while at the marina, while we wait for the sail guy to come and measure for the sails. After that, we will move the boat up to Napa Valley Marine, near Napa, but really near nowhere. There we will have Hot Sauce hauled out and we will paint the bottom and topsides and decks. Why aren't the topsides the same as the decks? Dunno, but the topsides are the sides of the hulls and the decks area well,,, the top of the boat, but not the topsides... We are coming up with all sorts of fun projects to do while hauled out, so we may be up there for a while.