Progress

We went down to the boat late Thursday night (3/25/10), got there just before midnight, unloaded the car and crawled into our bunk. Friday morning we woke up to 34 degrees outside and not much warmer down below where we were hiding. A while back I had said something about "this isn't going to be a camping trip" but until we get the boat in the water and have ourselves adjusted to this new lifestyle it is, indeed, much like camping.

The new range in the galley works with propane gas which is stored outside the cabin in a ventilated locker below the deck. Propane can be nasty stuff because it's heavier than air and will settle to the lowest spot on a boat just waiting for a spark to ignite it. Good ventilation, a propane detector and maintaining a safe ritual of turning everything off when not in use is mandatory. During the survey last September a leak in the system was noted. Since we were going to replace the range we didn't bother with this item thinking it would be taken care of during the installation. This is known as wishful thinking.

John Hellwege stopped by to answer some questions we had, one of which was about the range. The first thing we did was discover that the propane tanks had been left open by the previous owners and were now empty. He showed us how to check the operation of the gas flow solenoid and how to light the stove, which is basically the same as the gas stove in your kitchen. Afterwards I ran down to the hardware store and had both tanks filled, 2.2 gallons each, and hooked them up so we could have some breakfast. Pancakes and eggs, yum! When I opened the valve I could smell propane, a sure indication of a leak. I closed the valve and watched the pressure guage for a few minutes, noting a slow but consistant drop of the needle. Definitely a leak and defintely not the time to start cooking breakfast. I looked at the hose connections between the tank and the solenoid, pretty ugly, and decided this was something that would need a total rebuild. This project got placed on the priority list somewhere below sanding the hull so we jumped in the car and drove into town for some breakfast.

Did I mention it was really windy and raining and 34 degrees Friday morning? Not being good weather for sanding the hull, we spent most of the day down below trying to stay warm. I focused on installing a 4 way control switch for the new tri/anchor light at the top of the mast. This is a really cool item and was a necessary addition because the original light was broken when the boat was trucked up from Florida. The replacement is made by Orca Green Marine and uses LED's for a super bright navigation light that can be seen 2 miles off (a benefit of using LED's is that they draw less current than incandescent lamps, which is important on a sailboat). It combines the 3 navigation lights used on boats (Navigation Lights) and a white 360 degree light that's used while at anchor. The anchor light is set up with a photo-diode to sense when it gets dark out so you can turn it on when you go ashore during the day and it'll come on by itself as night sets in. This'll make it easier to find the boat after a late night on the beach. Another cool feature is a super bright strobe that's built in and can be used in times of distress to help other boats find you, or for those times when you sail into a Grateful Dead concert. Back in January I had installed the light at the top of the mast, which is currently laying on saw horses in the boatyard. Friday it took me hours to figure out which wire goes where at the navigation station, where the switch will be located, but I finally got it all figured out.

Friday night was somehow even colder than the night before and we woke up feeling tired and miserable on Saturday morning. We still had a ton of work to do but decided that we would go home that evening instead of trying to stay another night. Time keeps ticking and our projected launch date is looking like it's going to have to move back at least a week, maybe more. John Hellwege informed me that the mast won't be re-installed, "stepped", for at least another two weeks, which puts us beyond our launch date anyway. Such is life.

When John H. (I found out they call him Wiggy) came by on Friday he called in the resident expert, Mac, to take a look at our bottom paint. They both decided it was not ablative, but an epoxy, "hard", anti-fouling paint. This was great news as it's just the thing I wanted to use in place of my #1 choice, CopperCoat. The paint that's on there is in pretty bad shape with lotsa "mud cracks" but I can sand it smooth and re-apply a fresh coat and hope to get some mileage out of it before we have to repaint. I spent all day, about 7 hours, sanding below the waterline on the starboard side doing my best to smooth out the cracking and give it a really good surface for fresh paint. This is a really crappy job, even with the sander connected to the shop vac because paint dust coats everything and makes a mess. You're also working in the most uncomfortable positions trying to apply pressure as you sand. Not fun. About halfway through, the shop vac filter clogged and I didn't notice until I was almost finished. Red paint dust was everywhere and when I pulled the vacuum apart to get the filter off, all this really fine paint dust dumped out on my white tennis shoes, instantly turning them pink. Of course I wasn't smart enough to wear crappy old shoes for this job so now I have pink shoes to wear to work on Monday.

We spent Saturday night recovering at home in Silver Spring and then drove back out to Rock Hall Sunday morning. I dove right back into it and started sanding on the port side. Mac came by and talked for awhile about this and that and then took a look at my sanding job on the starboard side. He asked me why I was working so hard at the sanding because the fish don't really care what the bottom of the boat looks like. He said when the yard does a paint job they do very little sanding before applying the paint and it always comes out just fine. After he left I lightly sanded down the port side just to clean it up but not putting in the effort I did the day before. I had the job done in under 3 hours. Mac is now my new best friend.

Getting the sanding done is a huge step towards being back in the water and it's definitely one of the worst parts of owning a boat. It feels really good to have that chore behind us. Next weekend we're gonna scrub the boat down, everything above the waterline, with a white pad and "Scubbing Bubbles" to remove the oxidation on the gelcoat. This will prepare it for some serious compounding with 1000 grit paste and then a good coat of some quality wax. We'll do the waxing but the youthful dudes who work at Gratitude will do the compounding. Thank God for the yutes.

After we scrub it down we'll be ready to paint the bottom with Pettit Trinidad SR, quality stuff at $250/gallon. This is a modified epoxy paint with 70% cuprous oxide, basically copper powder, which works to prevent critters and slime from attaching to the hull under water. It's better for the environment than ablative paint which peels off layers when something, barnicles or crud, tries to attach to it. There must be tons of ablative paint chips laying at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay interacting with all the poor critters down there. Just can't be a good thing. Anyway, the Trinidad SR has a very high copper level and is quite effective, being only second to CopperCoat. At least according to the Europeans. My plan is to go as long as we can on this bottom job, hopefully at least three years. The next time we paint, we'll have the bottom sandblasted, re-sealed and then painted with CopperCoat. That should carry us for many years into our retirement and circumnavigation.