Eyes On The Prize

In the midst of everyone in the US getting ready for Christmas and Santa, while everyone seems to be decking their halls (and walls and lawns and cars) with festive decorations, I am trying my darnedest not to succumb to a fit of schmoopiness. While I might not be feeling very merry, I refuse to have a Blue Christmas and will instead focus on the positive.

 See, we had planned to be leaving NOW. Head the boat  for New Orleans, spend Christmas in my favorite US city and perhaps pal around with Dani and Tate ( who are such great peeps and unlike us, they are leaving soon so if you need to read about a boat underway, see their blog!) and then head east and south for the Caribbean. There was a fatal flaw in this plan. We had not adequately allowed for Captain Perfecto's need to complete the final bits of boat work with his requisite painstakingly, glacially slow but never the less absolutely gorgeous workmanship. Entire Pacific islands were created out of lava at a faster pace...

Everyone admires a perfectly restored boat which has been completely refit/rebuilt  with functionality, safety, structural integrity and beauty in mind. Not so many have the stomach to actually do the work required. I am certainly not going to fault those with a "go now" philosophy who will settle for "good enough" because if left to my own devices I think I would absolutely fall into this camp. But I am not a solo sailor. (which is good because I am still NOT confident in my docking abilities) I am 1/2 of a sailing couple and the needs of all must be considered. Mark NEEDS the boat to be finished to a level he is comfortable with. The difficulty is what he is comfortable with is, well, perfect. It's an obsession really. I have walked this path with him before at various times and I have found it best to just give him the latitude and space to do what he needs to do, cheer him on his successes, commiserate on the failures and be patient. The results have always been worth it in the end but I am not going to lie, it is not always easy to await the finished product.

So what work is being completed? A whole lot of varnishing. After having hit upon an application method that gives consistent results with Interlux Perfection Plus Varnish Clear Quart Kit , we thought we would try the same with Bristol Finish  . We have a friend who had excellent results with Bristol Finish and since we had some on hand, why not do a bit of experimenting? The good news? Bristol Finish does in fact provide a harder finish than Interlux. The bad news? It is really, really persnickety. We had such a time trying to get a good result with each coat and it just never happened. Basically, it just looked worse with each and every coat despite our painstakingly precise application. Bottom line for us is we will be an Interlux boat. Yes, we might have to sand and reapply a few coats a bit more frequently than we would with Bristol but this is offset by the fact that we can manage to get a really nice finish with the Perfection Plus.

The turtle shell should be reinstalled in the next couple of days and then we can start thinking about installing our rigid boom vang. Progress people, this is progress.

In the mean time, we've managed to sneak in the baking of a few batches of Christmas cookies which Kitty delivered to her "friends" at "her favorite store in the world"- Kemah Hardware. Kitty performed with her preschool class at the Christmas spectacular. We ran into Santa Claus at the Kemah Christmas parade. One of the benefits of catching the tail end of the parade, Santa has time to really listen to what you would like for Christmas. Santa even took the time to sit down and have a long chat with our wee girl and even wrote down what she wanted for Christmas " a pink truck. Not a pretend one but a REALLY real one". Santa then told her she might have to wait a few years but that he wrote it down so he would not forget and then asked her for another option to which she replied "it's all on the letter I wrote you".





So maybe we aren't leaving in a few weeks as planned. Things happen and you can either fight it or go with it. We are going with it, keeping on keeping on and keeping our eyes firmly on the prize. Soon. Very, very soon.

Hatching A Plan....

Tackling the deck sounds so straight forward. Just slap on on new deck hardware, a a little butyl tape and get on with it. But this is our home we are talking about and she hasn't been through a really thorough revitalization and at 30 years old, it's way past time. Also, Mark is not called Captain Perfecto without good cause. Due to these factors, we figured if we are going to take the time to refit and refurbish the top sides, might as well get it ALL in tip top shape while we have the boat apart.

While we have the hatches off to paint the decks, we thought it best to get our hatches in the best shape we possibly can before rebedding and reinstalling them. I documented how we managed to save the lenses previously with polishing, now it's time to get the frames themselves in the best shape possible.

Hatch frame before anodizing and refinish. I think you can see why we had to do something....

We sent the frames out to have them bead blasted and anodized with a hard finish. We got them back recently and well, while they were improved we still had concerns. The finish achieved was a bit rough and pitted. To us it was more than a cosmetic issue. We are were concerned that those tiny little pits and crevices would provide an entry for salt water to make it's way into the structure and just chew through the aluminum. We really do not want to have to replace these at over $1,000 a piece so we got to thinking...

After thinking it through for a bit, Mark got busy.

First off,  he carefully sprayed the frames with a coating ofWest System epoxy. We seriously love West Systems. So so many uses. Usually West Systems won't adhere to aluminum but we had enough pitting to provide "grip" for the epoxy. We let it cure to a hard finish before sanding it with 220 grit sand paper. Add another thin coat of West Systems, cure, sand and repeat for a total of 4 coats.

  Now we were faced with yet another challenge. West Systems is wonderful stuff, but it is not UV resistant. Paint however IS UV resistant. The question now was what pain

We knew we wanted to keep the frames silver. We just assumed we would pick up some Awlcraft 2000 in silver. Not so fast peeps. Silver in either Awlgrip or Awlcraft is special order so there is the time element. Then there was another big tick against it in this application. It is also $175.00 a quart.
Ouch,

After having a good, long think about it and reading all the info we could on various paints we decided to bite the bullet and go with Paint Shop Duplicolor in silver. $25 is a lot easier to swallow than $175. Our worry is whether or not it will adhere well over time to the epoxy. We are going to watch and will give a report in a few months time. If you are thinking of going this route, wait a bit and see how our paint holds up. If it all goes horribly wrong, you can skip it and just thank us for doing you a favor. That's us, doing the stupid so you don't have to,

While the final coat of West System was still tacky, Mark applied a primer coat of paint. After letting it dry completely, he applied 3 additional coats of paint. We have found through trial and error that many thin coats gives a much superior finish to fewer, heavier coats.

After the final coat of paint has had a good cure,  a bit of wet sanding with 400 grit paper and we are ready to add our final clear coats. We once again busted out the Interlux Perfection Plus and applied 2 coats. One of the ON label uses of Interlux is as a clear coat for painted finishes and it offers really great UV protection so fingers crossed it all goes as we think it will.

And Voila!

Newly anodized, sprayed with epoxy, sanded and painted, Just awaiting one final clear coat then fingers crossed!

A Cure for The Varnish Blues

I've been thinking about changing the layout and design of the blog for a bit. I'm still thinking big blog design thoughts but I think I do really need to change the tag line. 'A little crew, a small boat and a great big world to see' will work perfectly when we cast off the lines (looking like late spring at this point) but until then, we are still- despite our heartfelt desires for it to be otherwise, a refit blog. In keeping with the way things have been going as of late, I have come up with a new tag line:

Our Life With Ceol Mor- we do the stupid so you don't have to.

The finish we achieved thus far on the varnish left much to be desired. Dragging, brush marks, runs, etc, etc. We could just call it good and live with the uneven, kind of gloopy (gloopy IS a technical term, At least now it is.) overly thick finish. A previous owner had made this choice at some point in the past which is why we were dealing with some fairly manky looking flaky, peeling varnish in the first place. Our thoughts were if we get the bright work to a really fine, immaculate finish then it would be easier to keep it up to a level we are happy with. Since neither one of us wants to ever have to take it down to bare wood again, we've spent the time to get it right.

Varnishing is one of those jobs that sounds fairly straight forward. If you follow the instructions in the refit Bible This Old Boat, Second Edition: Completely Revised and Expanded you thin the initial coat of varnish by 50%, then 20%, then 10% and continue on with sanding with specific varying sandpaper grits and you should have a beautiful finish after about 9 coats. Mr, Casey gives excellent advice but with one caveat. He should state that this works "Sometimes, Usually, Mostly. Unless you have crap brush skills".  We do in fact, have crap brush skills. Also,  Ceol Mor apparently likes being unique and quirky which means that despite our most careful adherence to the manufacturer's and Mr. Casey's instructions, our finished product looked well, crap.

Mark had a think about it and I am thrilled that after much sanding (MUCH sanding) and trial and error we have come up with a much more straight forward way of getting the level of finish we wanted. After applying an initial coat 2 coats of  Interlux Perfection Plus Varnish Clear Quart Kit thinned 75% with Interlux Reducing Solvent 2333N to really get it into the wood, we thinned EVERY coat 50% and applied it with a soft cloth, much like a French polish application.


YES! Success! Okay, so it's not a time saver as we applied 20 coats this far., (Yes. I really did say 20 coats. There are 10 more to go so a total of 30. Jinkies.) but the level of finish is one we are happy with and the results are very consistent. We are hoping that with regular maintenance every 6 months or so we can keep it looking tidy and pristine. A little sanding, a couple of new coats and fingers crossed it continues to look like shiny, happy bright work.. We could have saved SO much time and effort if Mark had just had the good sense to come up with this fix in the first place.

See? We do manage to muck it all up but come up with a fix that works. So if you are suffering the varnish blues, you might give this method a try. We just saved you a couple of weeks of frustration. We do the stupid so you don't have to,

Mark opted to mount the handrails on pvc pipe and then add counter balances to each end. 2 sawhorses, 'stops' mounted on each side to prevent the rails from rolling off and now we are able to rotate the rails to ensure a very even application. Best to do this now while the headliner is off.