The Fall (’08) maintenance schedule included replacing the two hatches, rehabilitating the hatch screens and keeping up with the brightwork.                              First the brightwork:  The teak on Charisma is finished with Cetol, a semi-transparent coating similar to varnish.  It’s more durable than varnish and easier to work with, but still needs maintenance.  I’m finding out the hard way that when it goes, it goes fast.  A fair amount suddenly started to peel this Summer.  I got behind on it (preferring sailing to working) and now I’m having to strip some areas and completely refinish.  The “eyebrow” trim on the cabin, all four dorade boxes, the companionway hatch cover, boom gallows and the forward hatch covers all needed the full treatment.  This meant; tape the area off, strip (I used paint remover; oops.  More on that below), sand, scrub with teak cleaner and then four coats of new Cetol.  I used Te-Ka, a two part teak cleaner.  Amazing stuff, but scary.  Part one will stain anything including fiberglass.  Part two is used to deactivate the agent in part one and lifts the dirt.  Make sure everything is very wet when you use it and follow instructions carefully.  I was able to Cetol the cockpit in time before it got too bad as well as the rails, but the Port side is suffering somewhat more (it faces the sun) and won’t look as good.  I don’t want to refinish that until we’re in the boat yard at some future point since it’s awkward to reach while Charisma’s in the water.  The good news is that if you get to the Cetol finish in time, it only needs one coat for maintenance and not sanding involved.  Just dull it a bit with a scrubbing pad, wipe with Acetone and brush on a new outside coat.  The bad news is; don’t ever, ever, use regular paint remover anywhere near fiberglass.  It melts the gel coat off.  Fortunately, I had taped off all the areas I was working on in case of mishaps, but there are a few small areas where the stripper went through the tape.  Gel coat repair is going to be the next thing I’m going to be learning how to do (very minor, but I notice it).  The one boo-boo was trying to sneak a last series of touch up coats of Cetol when I knew the fog was going to come in.  I was hoping that it would dry enough before the fog actually made it to the boat.  But when I came down the next day, I saw that the Cetol had “bubbled” where dew had gathered and sat on the deck.  Given a week with better weather, the bubbles have gone away, but the area is “dull”, so I’m going to have to scrub it and give it a final gloss coat when it’s warm enough.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The new hatches.  Shana and I gave each other a hatch cover for Christmas presents last year because the hatches leak when it rains.  The originals are twenty years old and Lewmar no longer makes replacement parts for them, so new ones it was.  Really nice “Ocean” series hatches.  It’s so nice to be able to see through them now, but like everything else, it’s a time-consuming job.  First remove.  I thought that would be the hard part, but the old ones actually came off pretty easily.  Then clean.  A lot of old adhesive to clean up.  Then tape, strip and sand and refinish the teak coaming that the hatches mount onto.  Four coats of Cetol with 24 hours in between each coat means that this is automatically a week long job.  Putting the hatch on means adding caulk (3M, 4000) which always makes a huge mess even with adhesive cleaner and the aforementioned tape on everything.  But it sure is nice to hatches that; don’t leak, stay open where you put them and I like the new feature that lets you lock them open one inch, to help with ventilation.                                                                                         The Tedious Stuff.  As long as I was putting in the new hatches, Shana felt it was time to rehab the hatch screens which were torn, old and their frames were suffering from the hatch leaks (I was trying to ignore them knowing they would be a pain to fix).  This meant taking them home, prying off the quarter round trim (which broke) and then stripping, sanding, etc the two frames that hold the screen (each is 2’x1′).  Then off to the boat store for new screen, brass tacks and new teak quarter round.  I was going to use brass screen, but ended up getting a fiberglass screen.  It looks just like the old screen and is easy to work with.  I just finished putting them back together and they look pretty good (picture below).   As long as I was working on the screens, I figured this would be a good time to refinish the dorades.  They were peeling pretty badly and I figured that it would be easiest and best to just bring them home and completely redo them.  So, stripping, sanding…you know the drill, but I have to say they are going to look good. So, that’s certainly one thing about boats: they make you learn lots of new skills as well as how to work with toxic chemicals!                                                                                  

Who’d a thought we’d be out of the water for so long?  Turned out the yard got busy and Charisma sat for over two weeks without any work getting done.  So now, I go down to boat every day for an hour to supervise and make sure the yard knows I’m watching.  They are finally getting things done.  They are doing nice work too.A bonus I just found out is that we’re going to be able to hard wire the “portable” Garmin gps  such that it will “talk” with the new instrument displays at the helm.  We put in two Brooks and Gatehouse Graphical Displays at the helm in the hopes that eventually we’d be able to get gps data when we get a chartplotter (hopefully next year?).  But in the mean time found out the Garmin will send the data just fine.  So we’re adding a permanent gps antenna and wiring the garmin to a data unit that will send the info to the displays and to the new panel.  Then we’ll be able to configure one display for speed and depth and the other display to show gps course and distance.  In the center of the nav pod we also put an analog wind speed/direction gauge.  We also put a “repeater” display over the nav table to we’ll have the same data down below.  The “new” prop and prop shaft also went in today.  Turns out the prop was probably too big, but the pitch was OK, so the shop ground it down to a smaller diameter.  They took about 2 inches off, so now it’s a 16 inch diameter prop.  Looks much better.  I hope it performs as well as it looks.  Also they said the shaft was “toast” (their words), so we’ve a brand new one.  One final bit of good news is while digging in the storage compartments to run new wire, the electrician solved another boat mystery.  He uncovered a strange looking pvc tube with numerous rope loops on it.  Aha!  The spreader bar for the sunshade!  We have a sunshade with lots of attachments but no visible means with which to stretch it.  I’ve been trying to figure out how in the world it worked.  Mystery solved.  Here’s a picture of the new prop versus the old prop.  Not sure if you can see the difference in these photos, but now the blades have a better shape.                                                                   

Well, it’s March 10 and Charisma is still on the hard.  I dropped by today (after a couple weeks of traveling) to see what progress has been made.  They’ve had the boat for about three weeks now and the bottom paint is done, the head intake was fixed (an uncooperative clam had set up home and clogged the water intake).  There’s a new diesel fill line (the old one was not rated for fuel), the inside is torn up as they’ve started with the new instruments, but just barely.  I don’t think they have yet tackled putting in a new line to the holding tank. That will be a lot of work and I decided it better to leave that to the yard than to tackle it myself.  The binnacle’s off in the metal shop being altered to accept the new instrument pod since-you guessed it-the new instruments wouldn’t fit in the old one.  Also the prop’s off and the shaft was deemed “toast” so a new shaft will be part of the overhaul (extensive corrosion pitting likely due to the previous owner not sailing her enough).  They have not yet started work on the new circuit panel.  The old one had no more space for electrical “stuff”, so I’m having a new one put in to make additions easier.  It will also begin the development of a real nav station in the quarter-berth as it will allow for installation of a new data repeater that will show speed, depth and wind and future adds likely to include GPS, Radar and SSB Radio. Lastly, the new rigging is not started yet since that’s not done until the boat is put back in the water.  All in all, looks like at least another two weeks at the least.  Probably just as well, since the garden needs attention anyway.   🙂                              

Yep, if we thought previous work was expensive, today I scheduled the big one.  The haul out.  Actually part of the purchase of Charisma included budgeting for some of what is to come.  

• New standing rigging including a roller furling headstay and SSB backstay antenna
• New lifelines
• Running backstays (as a cutter rig, the staysail needs a bit of extra support.  You can see the mast pump in a lot of wind.  When we’re on the ocean pounding into 15 foot waves, I don’t want to have to worry about the mast!)
• New halyards
• New electrical wiring in the mast
• New masthead Tri-color
• New wind, depth and speed instruments
• Bottom sanded and painted
• New prop (mentioned in previous post)

And a bunch of other misc stuff.  I’m going to do some work on the boat while she’s on the hard as well.  The fun one should be installing the new gasket kit for the head.  Ahhh, boat ownership is sooo glamorous! February 19 is the big day, but when we’re done, we’ll have solid new rigging to go with our overhauled diesel.  The combination gives us the confidence that we’ve replaced “the big stuff”.  Even though Charisma’s actually in great shape, she is after all, 20 years old and we want to make sure that her rig and systems are solid and ready for the next 20.