Tell the truth I was so exhausted today I just took a long nap this afternoon.  We can hardly believe we’re been at this non-stop for two weeks.  We also had a good excuse to take a break today since the “boys” sprayed the bottom paint on the boat today.  Two coats, four (roughly) gallons-each costing $250/can.  Ouch.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the continuing adventure of being on the hard.

Taking the heat gun to the toe-rail. Don't try and dry your cat with this. It's about 2000 watts and I already burned my chest hair.

It gets very detailed. You have to get every last bit of the old varnish or it shows through on the new.

We had a sign painter touch up Charisma's name.

He was a real pro. Look closely at the "M". The original left off the shadow, which he noticed and fixed as shown in the next pic

Oh yeah, Charisma is smiling with all this attention (see the drop shadow on the "M"?)

Time to tape. We're spray painting the bottom paint

Mixing the paint. Four gallons at $250/gallon (actually it's in metric and I have no clue as to the actual quantity-it looks about a gallon per can). Yikes!

Here we go. Wow, that's RED! It's getting more subtle as it dries.

All done. Can't wait for the great unveiling tomorrow.

OK, so that’s my excuse.  Ann kept on polishing.  You go girl!

So…on another subject, here’s a great recipe for dinner.  We bought some snapper fillets (any nice whitefish filet will do-flounder would be good), wrapped them in foil with butter, chopped garlic, chopped basil, chopped parsley, salt, pepper and a couple slices of lemon.  Put on the barbie for about five minutes and…delicious!  Go do it tonight!

Yup, we’re still here.  But progress is being made.  The new waterline is looking good, the bowsprit fitting is almost ready to go on (I put one more coat of thickened epoxy on tonight to fair it into the hull), the bowsprit painting is done (yay!-and it looks lovely), the hatches are one more coat of paint from being done and there’re only another two days of cabin polishing left to be done.

The downside is the new project I started-stripping off some of the old varnish, is going to take a while.  Even though it’s just the toe-rail and rub-rail on each side of the boat, just stripping those is going to take a couple days (37 feet times two for each side).  Then they have to be sanded, bleached and at least three coats of new finish (Cetol).

Oh well, at least we’re enjoying the people here.  Tonight we had dinner with Jim and Linda Fair from Berkeley Yacht Club.  They actually live in Mountain View, but it turns out I knew Jim back in the day when I was at UC Berkeley and sailing at the Cal Sailing Club. Re-aquainted after 38 years!!?  How’s that for the small world department?

OK, have to sign off for tonight so I can beat Ann again at cards.  I’d show the picture of Ann EATING the scoresheet from last night so I couldn’t tape it to the wall, but it’s not a pretty sight.

Did you ever wonder how they plug the screw holes in the teak? Here's step one-expoxy the holes and hammer teaks plugs in. Step two is to trim these with a chisel and step three is sand them smooth.

Here's stripping the old varnish (old is at bottom)

Another view of the transition from old varnish to virgin teak (in foreground).

If you look closely you can see "green" tape. That's where the old waterline (i.e. red paint) was. We've lowered it in the stern. Looks much better and this is only the first coat.

And Charisma is going to get her name re-touched. Hard to see in the picture, but the paint is wearing off. She needs a little touching up. !

So…the projects are coming along.  Charisma is getting a bigger overhaul than I had planned, but a better one to boot.  Today Ann finished painting the bowsprit (probably-we’ll have to see what it looks like tomorrow), I got a bunch of final touches on the two hatches I’ve been rebuilding-they should be done in another day or two.  Gavin, the painter made up a good color for changing the waterline and put a first coat on that (we’re lowering the waterline on the aft part of Charisma-it was always painted in the wrong place), and we have a bid that we have accepted for touching up the boat name.

On the sort of minus side-the epoxy I put on a big chip on the bow at the bowsprit fitting didn’t kick off yesterday so I had to dig it out and mix another batch.  Today’s batch did kick so tomorrow I can grind it down and see if it needs a final fairing touch or is OK as is. Also I started to work on the port rub-rail and toe-rail for varnishing and found that it is time to just take all the old layers off.  So, out with the heat gun and I’m stripping 15 years of old varnish (actually Cetol) which is a MUCH bigger job than it sounds.  I’m guessing that just stripping the port and starboard sides will take 2 1/2 days, then another 2 days of sanding/fairing/bleaching, 1 day to tape and probably 4 days to put a couple coats of Cetol back on.  We have to stay with Cetol because all the other wood is still OK and uses that product.  So….probably another nine days of work although I don’t imagine we’ll do all those on the hard.  We can put on the Cetol once we’re back in the water.

So, that’s today…We finished with a lovely Red Snapper wrapped in foil with vegetables.  One of the folks here (Michael from Zimbabwe) was up at the BBQ and saw our dinner and asked me what I used to do for work.  After answering him, he looked at me, then at the food and said; “Well, you missed your calling, that looks delicious”.  Score one for Bob.

The Snapper is worth a few words.  At 8AM this morning we heard someone climbing up the ladder.  I went outside and there was Shane, one of the boatyard guys.  You might recall that we gave Shane our old foul weather pants and he was thrilled.  Anyway, with a grand Kiwi smile he reached into the large plastic bag he had in his hand and pulled out an equally large (and beautiful) Red Snapper.  “Here ya go Buddy, caught ‘er this morning”.  He then carefully kept the bag and handed me the fish by the tail.  So, our dinner was delivered.  He also noted; “I’ve left the head on, but if yer don’t want the head, just give it back to me later!”  OK.  Nice.  (BTW, it was delicious)

OK, a little Beatles nostalgia for any of those old enough to remember.  We’ve now been on the hard and WORKING for eight days.

Ann’s new favorite job is painting the bowsprit!  Well not exactly.  She was pretty cranky this morning knowing that was her main job today.

We built a scaffold to get up to paint the bowsprit

Not the most fun job. It's a little scarier than it looks and very tedious. Almost takes more time to sand and tape than to just pain the thing. We also have to sand in between coats.

But, someone’s gotta do it.  For my part, I spent most of the day working on the detail work on the lazarette hatches.  After epoxying the plywood backing, I now have to put a couple pieces of teak trim back on (step one-epoxy), I’ve already taken out a couple seams that were leaking, have taped them and tomorrow will fill them with black polysulfide (also know as caulking-step two) and then need to finish the new plywood backing which will need a primer coat (step three) and several coats of polyurethane (steps four, five and maybe six).  Nothing’s easy.

Today’s other highlight was the Sunday Yachties BBQ.  A pot luck at the gazebo where the BBQ is.  Fun as usual to get together with a couple dozen other folks who are sailing the South Pacific.  We sat with a French couple, a Swiss couple and an American couple-who it turns out knew one of my good friends from University days.  Very small world.

A good day.  Well, any day not spent grinding fiberglass in the bow is a good day, but we ARE progressing.  Ann is one day away from finishing polishing and waxing the hull!  Yay!  Charisma is looking beautiful.  It has taken almost an entire can of Carnuba wax so far.  That’s a lot of elbow grease.  And that’s after she went over the entire hull with polishing compound to remove the oxidation.  Wow.

For my part I did some miscellaneous stuff today, but it was nice to get a LOT of things going that are actually on the list!

-Ordered spare oil and fuel filters for the engine and a spare alternator belt

-Got the wood shop to cut plywood backing for the lazarette hatches off of the pattern I made from some scrap cardboard.  I have already primed the backs of the plywood and will epoxy them on to the teak hatches on Sunday.  With any luck the hatches should be as good as new in a few days.

-Ugly job alert.  I spent a couple hours down in the lazaratte digging out old packing from the stuffing box.  Sorry there’s no pictures to describe this-it’s just a really terrible job jammed into a small space under the cockpit.   There’s really no extra room to take a pic. Contortionists would love the project.  It’s definitely a three Tylenol job.  BUT, I got all the old packing out and put three new pieces in.  Basically this is the thingy where the propeller shaft goes out through the hull.  The packing is a kind of wax/hemp combination (looks like square piece of rope) that when “stuffed” into the stuffing box, has a tight enough fit that it keeps water from coming in through the prop shaft hole.  At least not much water.  The ideal according to most experts is that you tighten the gland that compresses the packing just enough so it drips about one drip/30 seconds when the engine is off and one drip per 10 seconds when the shaft is turning.   OK, got that?  I didn’t think so.  Forget it unless you own a boat, then very important to figure out.   😉

-While I was in the lazarette, I greased and exercised the through hulls (don’t ask) and greased the rudder bearing.  Very easy to ignore these things, but they will “bite” you if you do.

So, tomorrow, we’re going to do more work, but in the morning we’ll take a bit of a break and walk over to the Saturday Farmer’s Market.  Then on the way back stop by the cruiser’s swap meet up on the bridge.  We’ll try and take some pics to explain.

So that’s it for today.  Oh, also, Shane, one of the boatyard guys who we gave our old foulies to, brought us a beautiful Red Snapper this morning.  It was really one of the most fresh, gorgeous fish I have ever seen and I put it on ice until dinner when we filleted it and wrapped it in foil with some veggies and tossed in the BBQ for a delicious dinner.

That’s all from the boatyard for today…

Today, I finally felt like we were making some progress forward instead of just getting buried deeper in projects.  Some stuff actually started moving forward and we got stuff done.

But first, I have to say how lucky I am that I got a wonderful Valentine’s Day card from Ann with my morning coffee.  I only wish I had been as harumph, er, ah…proactive.  Well, I took us to a nice dinner as my contribution to Valentine’s Day.

So, now that the bobstay project is moving forward and in the machine shop, I decided to move on to a new project.  The lazarette hatches.  These are teak with plywood backing. They have been leaking and I knew they needed work, so I took them off and starting working on them.  I’ll make this long story short and let the pictures show that the plywood backing was rotting and almost all of it had to be scraped and sanded off.  But…the project’s still going well.  I got them down to the last bit of laminate, was able to put two coats of primer on them and tomorrow will patch them up with some putty.  Then I will either fiberglass the backs or epoxy a piece of plywood back on-I’m not sure which at this point, although I have cut some cardboard patterns should I decide to go with the plywood.

This is the top side of the hatch cover

Found some rot in the corners

After scraping some of the bad wood out, I found it was more extensive than I thought

Nice to have my new grinder (Christmas present from Mom and Dad)

Two hatches on the workbench almost ready to prime

On another note: the holes for the bobstay bolts had some "voids" in the fiberglass. We plugged them with dowels and filled them with epoxy. I'll drill them back out in a couple days when the epoxy dries. The new fitting is done and I'm picking it up tomorrow.

In the mean time, the one thing going according to schedule is Ann's work on cleaning and polishing the hull. Just check out the shine...!

Page one: our partial list for the boatyard folks...

Page 2 is the list of stuff we're supposed to do.

So…some progress.  Feels good to get something done other than just grinding away at the same stupid hole looking for the mystery bolt.

Hopefully more progress tomorrow as well and we’ll be working through the weekend hoping to catch up a bit from our slow start.  Would be nice to finish up so we can do some land cruising, but since we’re paying for the boatyard by the day, it’s important that we get all the needed work done so we can “splash” back in the water.  Some of our list can be done later when we’re back in the water, but there’s still a few things that can only be done while on the hard.

Yeah, get used to it.  We’ll likely be here another two weeks.  After six days on the hard we are progressing on some of our projects and not so well on others.  Specifically, Ann is kicking on the boat polishing project.  She is now applying the final carnuba wax coat on the hull and will likely finish tomorrow.  Good progress.  On the other hand, Bob has been working for days on a project that was not even on the project list, so he’s not progressing so well on that.

Major corrosion that would have resulted in a sudden catastrophic failure, resulting in dismasting. Glad we found it, but it's taking time and effort we hadn't planned for. Oh well, welcome to boating.

These are about 1/3 of the tools I "burned up" trying to excavate the bolts for the bobstay fitting. At about $20/tool.

We couldn't get to the heads inside the hull, so finally resorted to having the metal shop guy cut them off with a cut-off wheel. Took about 30 seconds!

Here's one of the bolts showing the head that was cut off. If you click on the picture and look closely, you can also see the bolt had some crevice corrosion going on the left side (which was the outside closest to the water).

I set up a scaffold and am inspecting the entire bowsprit (which is about 12 feet in the air)

OK, so the bobstay wasn’t on the project list, but we’re really glad we found this.  I don’t think the fitting was a lot longer for this world and if this part breaks-so long mast!  I already have a quote for the machine shop to make the new fitting.  About $280 for the fitting and $28/bolt.  However, there is also still some fiberglass work that we need to do which I am looking to the shop to do that will add to the overall cost.  I found some ‘voids’ inside the bolt-holes and underneath the backing plate.  I’m having the fiberglass guys inject epoxy resin inside the holes to strengthen the whole thing.  It’s  a bit more complex than that, but suffice to say I want to make sure it’s solid given the work I’ve put in so far to get this right.

So…now that this project is more or less on a path to a solution, I’m moving on to other projects that are actually on the list.  Next up-the lazarette locker hatches.  When Charisma was originally surveyed (for purchase) the hatches were pointed out as needing reinforcement.  They are finally to the point where I have to agree.  I’ll be removing them, grinding out the plywood backing which has some rot in it and then either/or (I’m not sure yet) epoxying a new plywood backing, or just fiberglassing the inside of the doors.  More to come on this once I get the doors off and have a look.

Ann will be spending tomorrow polishing the rest of Charisma and then will move on to the cabin and cockpit sides.  She is building some fierce muscles.  We both are very impressed with how beautiful Charisma is looking from all the effort.  She’s shining-and I must say, I think I can see her smile from all the attention.

The second bolt that is.  Whew what a job.  Two days of grinding, sawing, drilling and the only thing I have to show for it is that two bolts are now visible in the bow under the anchor locker.  It’s been a very ugly job and I have multiple bruises on my arms from “jamming” myself in through the locker, between the sampson posts in order to reach far enough to dig the damn things out.  Turns out that now I’ve got the bolts exposed, I’m too big to actually get a socket wrench on them and turn it, so tomorrow we have another (smaller) guy coming over to help with that part.

Doesn't look like two days worth of work, does it? But I burned up about $200 worth of saw blades and burr tools cutting through over 1 1/2 inches of fiberglass and epoxy to get at these buggers

Of course Ann kicked butt on her project and moved around to the starboard side. Less than 1/2 boat to go!

But....at the end of the day-THE BEST BBQ CORN EVER!!!!

An amazing boatyard sunset

And, the happy couple after a delightful dinner and a fistful of Tylenol

But, despite bruises and painful shoulders (try polishing a boat all day long as Ann’s been doing) the Tylenol is kicking in, dinner was fantastic and we’re noshing on a few bites of dark chocolate.  Life’s good.  Soon the medicinal rum will be deployed.

After working all day on exhausting projects, we were actually too tired to go out to dinner.  We decided to just BBQ some burgers and corn in the boatyard.  Wow!  We could not have had a better meal.  First off the scenery (see above).  Second, the food was unreal.  I just threw the corn in the husks on the fire, dropped some portobello ‘shrooms and then some ordinary looking “minced meat” (what NZ calls hamburger) on the barbie.  I have to say, all of the above were the best we’ve ever had.  The corn must have been harvested locally as it was so plump and bursting with flavor and the minced meat, er, I mean hamburger was amazing.  What really surprised us was how it didn’t shrink one bit.  I’m used to burgers getting about half as big once they are cooked-these guys didn’t get any smaller-there’s very little fat and fillers.  I’m going to buy less next time now that I know.

OK, so that’s all from the boatyard for today.  Stiff necks, bruised arms, sore shoulders and happy campers signing off for now!