Refloating day

Well, she still floats! First, of course, she had to fly. Double up on the straps on Berkeley's travel lift, and she gently comes up off the stands. After a month out of the water I was a bit concerned about drying, but there was no 'creaking and groaning' at all as she lifted.

The only real problem was that the feet of some of the stands had sunk into the asphalt to the point that it needed crowbars to get them out and move them out of the way :-)

Here they are positioning the straps. Easier to do on the hard than putting them under her for the original lift, relying on old photos to make sure we didn't catch a strut or the drive shaft.

And carefully driving her down to the water.

Unfortunately, there was a big rush around with fenders and stuff, repositioning the straps to lift out the next boat (Another large wooden boat - the ketch "Lydia") and moving my boat out and Lydia in, and I didn't get any pictures of the actual splash.

Here she is back on her dock, though, all shiny white and with a clean bottom, fresh anti-fouling and all new zincs. I had hoped to paint the gunwhale between the rubbing strake and toe-rail black before splashing, but time ran out. Never mind, easy enough to do at the dock.



Ready to splash

Well, just a quick update... anti-fouling is on. Two all-over coats of Trinidad, with a third coat on the leading edges and rudder.

Splash is scheduled for the 25th, to give it two full days to dry before we lift it. At 22 tons, there's a lot of weight on the straps, and I don;t want the paint pulling.

Painting the hull

Well, after four days of very hard work, my sons and I have the boat painted. Three coats of "Blue Sky" high gloss two-part marine paint, in their "brilliant white" color. I guess I should have taken more intermedate pictures, but "Here it is with one coat... here it is with two coats... gets boring. That said...

There she is primed, and...

There she is painted. Give it a day to dry, anti-fouling on, and back in she goes.

Starting the hull painting

Got started on painting the hull today. We've been sanding for days, and today we started priming the area where there was some hull damage on the port side of the bow. (The damage was repaired before I bought her, but never painted)

After priming that a couple of times, sanding back to smooth between coats, repriming it, I got it to a state ready for priming the whole port side of the hull.

Here it is primed and sanded, ready for the gloss to go on. You can see the yellow Stronium epoxy primer on the steel keel, too - I didn't put a picture of that in the keel section of the blog.

Transom refinish

Some 'pretty-work today. The Transom is all grey and faded out, so I decided to go ahead and start refinishing it. Foolishly, I forgot to take a picture before I started, but here's a picture with just the bottom foot or so rough-sanded, showing the state it was all in to begin with....

And here's a close-up showing how the wood cleans up...

The discoloration, though, was just on the surface, so it didn't take much to get it nice. I sanded it first with 120 grit, then 180, and finished off with 220.

I decided to go with a two-part tinted varnish from "Signature Finish", in their honey teak color, since it's a nice light color. Here it is with the first coat applied.

And here after a second. I used an ultra-fine 3M polishing pad between coats, not sure what the grit technically is.

This picture looks darker, but the varnish is still wet. The color is paler than this. So, finally, here it is all finished, dry, and on a sunny day.

And here's another picture of it finished off, showing a nice gloss.



Strut and cutlass bearing

As seen in the earlier post, the cutlass bearing isn't quite properly aligned with the shaft. Luckily, the shaft is riding low in the strut, so I need to lower the strut - a lot easier than raising it.

The strut is held on with 12 Monel bolts, each 14" long, that go right through the hull and the aft floors. In this picture the bolts have been driven about 2" down below the holes from inside the lazarette.

In driving them out, I damaged the thread ends. I took them into a local shop to have the thread ends repaired. (I couldn't get a die to start to repair them manually.) The shop quoted me $75 just to repair the 12 damaged threads, so I asked how much to buy new bolts. Cue hysterical laughter..... Well over $100 per bolt to buy new ones. The budget won't stand for $1500 worth of bolts, so recut the threads it is!

The strut is removed, showing the pads. These are in good clean shape, so a lexan shim, 3/16" thick, on each of these will bring the strut down to the right point.

The strut, fortunately, had been installed after the fibreglass sheathing on the hull, so it dropped right off once the bolts were out.

Here's the strut off the boat. The cutlass bearing has been removed, and it's ready for the new one. This thing weighs about 150 lbs! Good job I had some help dropping it off.

The design has a long shaft, so the strut is truly necessary. In this picture you can see the box keel of galvanized steel.

Here's the strut back in place, shim installed, bedding compound in, and the bolts back. I did buy new nuts, even though I re-used the Monel bolts. Even the damn nuts were expensive enough :-(

Sanding the keel

This being the People's Republic of Berkeley, after all, I can't sandblast the fin keel, as I'd of preferred to, but can only use a wire-wheel in an angle grinder, and even for that I have to tent the whole thing in plastic dropcloths to avoid putting dust in the air.

It's been hot, too. It is SOOOO much fun sitting inside an almost airtight plastic tent in the sun, wearing a respirator, and grinding rust off the steel.

It worked out pretty well, though. Here's the fin keel all wirewheeled down to white metal, and coated with a high zinc rust inhibiting primer.

I'll put a thick epoxy primer over this before I anti-foul, and that - combined with proper attention to the zincs - should prevent the keel from corroding any more. Luckily, the keel is made of really heavy stock - 5/8" steel plate - so the pitting isn't even close to going through. I drilled one small hole through the deepest pit, and the interior - above the poured lead in the bottom - is bone dry.