First, all the bottom paint was off by March.
At this point I decided to try a chemical stripper on the old blue paint on the port side. Unfortunately this revealed and also destroyed a good deal of fairing compound someone already applied just under the capping on the bulwarks. I didn't do that on the starboard side. Alas it was too late for the port side, and, as a wise man once told me, perfection is the enemy of completion. So instead of fairing again I sanded as best I could and painted it. All the while I was also sanding the bottom smooth and ultimately applying barrier coat. We used us composites two part epoxy with a turquoise color additive and west system alkaloid aluminum additive.
Free handing the curlicues was exceedingly stressfull. It was almost impossible to get the blue paint compleytely off the gel coat without leaving a blue shadow. Fortunately it largely worked out fine. I guess I was pretty neat with it.
Ordered the boat lettering and I think it was a success:
Meanwhile, as I was the only one visibly working on the boat I got a lot of positive feedback. My husband was inside working on the interior and was frequently accused of sleeping all day.
We had a lot of water intrusion inside. The 36 year old deck hardware had never been rebedded so step one was to take down all the rotten old paneling and step two was to rebed everything. Then new paneling had to be hung. It came out beautifully.
My part of this was to order and install new window gaskets. With no manufacturing information to go on I found a company that makes custom extrusions. I removed an old gasket, which was basicaly compressed rubber dust at this point, and used calipers to measure for replacements. The first batch of rubber extrusion was too large by .5 mm aka a hair and wouldn't fit into the groove. The second batch fit but only closed with the dogs screwed all the way down and with as much strength as I can muster. They still drip a bit even so. I am now on my third batch of possible gaskets, which just arrived in the mail yesterday. Hopefully they will be a better fit.
Our old water pressure pump was a belt driven jabsco pump that was probably original to the boat. It was shorting out and over heating so much that it melted the welds holding the sprocket on that held the belt on. Luckily it didn't catch on fire. We bought a replacement from Whale, which, when hooked up instantly sprayed water everywhere. Defender wouldn't take it as a return and we were forced to pay for shipping back to Atwood, the North American distributor of whale products, even though they had clearly not performed a single qc check on the pump since any test would have shown it was defective. They determined that a washer was missing and are shipping it back to us without a single apology. Lovely. I really hope it works and that they haven't poisoned it. Boo Atwood customer service and quality control. Very very disappointing. Definitely wouldn't trust them for a bilge pump or something more crucial.
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