Stuck in a Loop

Except for the Port Joslin Rendezvous, the Santa Cruz 27 rigging and sailing, a house guest, working on a kitchen cabinet project, a little tennis here and there, and spending weekend time with Susan, I've been working on the interior cabin side every day. Some days 7 hours, some days 3. So far 6 coats of 3-part primer and 4 1/2 coats of single-part Interlux Brightside finish, with sanding between coats. But I don't seem to be getting anywhere. It IS getting very smooth but you can still see through to the bondo in spots. I must be just about sanding off each coat after I apply it. If I don't, though, the finish is pretty rough. Still, this is not resource-efficient.

Yesterday I determined to stop this craziness and apply the final gloss coat of Brightside and call it good enough. Such high hopes. It started out perfectly but within ten minutes the new roller, which said "designed for all paints", started shedding fibers into the finish. I kept going thinking it would clear up but it just got worse. The only thing was to give up and return the rollers to West Marine. I got some different ones from KKMI boatyard. The workers there have to use what's in the store so those must work. Right? Now I have to sand that coat back off and start again.

The good news is that I'm getting a lot of practice with rolling and tipping and learning the good techniques and finding the lowest cost, high quality tipping brushes (and hopefully now the right rollers). One of the limitations that stretches out the project is that, if the temperature in the cabin gets a little too warm, blending the tipped sections gets difficult or impossible. I get highly visible vertical seams. The other realization I'm coming to is that 3-part paint is really the only thing that's tough enough for boat finishes, even on the inside.

Yesterday after the roller fiber fiasco, I finished the sanding on the exterior cabin trunk in anticipation that I will someday complete the interior (I'm just talking about the cabin side here) and start painting the outside. At this rate, I'll be lucky to get the new ports installed before the Christmas rains.

Fun in the Sun

I took several days off from sanding and painting for the Port Joslin Rendezvous, an annual gathering at Terry and Vicki Joslin's Bel Marin Keys home on the lagoon. This was the 14th year of the gathering and the first one that had none of our big boats there. Instead we raced Lasers and a Sunfish, raced kayaks, played some yard games, and had a wonderful BBQ.

Susan about to set out on her fateful voyage (5 capsizes).

Tony and Susan about to set out on their fateful voyage (dismasting). Unlike most Lasers, this one has a jib and wire rigging. It was great fun until the port shroud broke and the mast toppled into the lagoon. I was hiking out at the time and went over backwards into the drink. We sailed back to the dock under jury-rigged jib (me holding it up) with Susan's expert helmsmanship.

 On the race course. Susan (on the left) is way better trimmed than I am.

Terry on the Sunfish.



















 Sails drying in the yard.

Overall winner Richard Posthuma receiving his award from the Grand Master. A kiss too - lucky fellow!

Testing to be sure it's made from genuine potmetal.














A couple days later, I helped Tom Faraola step the mast on his new toy, a Santa Cruz 27 that he has added to his quiver of sailboats. He and Kristy and I went out for a sail and got one of the four spinnakers up.

Tom wants to do the Jazz Cup on Labor Day weekend, a spinnaker run from SF to Benicia for a great jazz festival. Then cruise back the next day. It's about 30 miles each way.

OK, nuff fun, back to work then.

Shop-Vac Obituary

In loving memory...

I was coming down the home stretch on my 5th sanding of the interior cabin side after the 6th coat of 3-part epoxy primer. This time using 220-grit disks. The last hour or so, the venerable old Shop-Vac, purchased shortly after Kuewa in 1996, had been shrieking these loud, awful failed-bearing sounds. The last 5 minutes was added the distinct smell of burning plastic and wiring (here we go again). Then a loud clatter-crunch, then silence. A wisp of blue smoke. I quickly moved it to the dock, and then, after a bit of cooling and a hug, to the dumpster.

What a revered old workhorse, faithful, assertive, and gritty. The replacement is much more civilized but likely not as valiant or enduring. We'll see how long IT will hold up to epoxy dust.

More Pukas, More Rain

Work has been pretty similar to the last two posts. A lot of tabbing in short bulkheads and filling and sanding the interior cabin sides.

 Then the other day I attached the small port template from Newfound Metals and cut out all 8 small port openings. There was a day of filling with epoxy the voids exposed by the cutting, and fairing that after curing.










On Saturday Mike Cheong, Mary Ellen Braly, and Susan came down and kibitzed from the adjoining dock while I positioned templates for the large port cut-outs. There was surprisingly little difference of opinion on the locations. I'm kicking myself for missing the opportunity to get pictures of that.

Yesterday I burned through 7 jigsaw blades and cut out the openings. It took almost all day. Fourteen layers of X-mat and epoxy make a formidable obstruction for cutting tools. I tried a mini circle saw with a metal-cutting blade, but that created too much heat and smoke for my comfort level. Memories of the duct tape residue removal adventure. In the end, the big jig saw and patience won out.

Not as attractive as the well-proportioned 4-foot long glass windows were, but definitely saltier.













As I was writing these words at 06:30, some large raidrops spattered on the roof, and then a loud, long rumble of thunder. More thunder than we've heard in a year and a half. I looked at the radar and there was a large green blob headed for San Rafael from the south. I boogied down there with windshield wipers going - actually enough rain to wash the car - and applied tape to the port openings. Of course, this precipitation is due to my cutting more holes in the boat. Nice to know Kuewa and I are continuing to end the drought.

Next up is painting the interior and exterior cabin sides.

On and On We Go

After not working on Kuewa for five days due to a bad back, I'm at it again. Well, I was until today. It's amazing how things pile up sometimes. Susan and I did a 3-stop errand run yesterday so I thought today would be lighter. I ended up going to 14 different places! And I forgot one errand. It's a long story, but it's all for ongoing little projects, only one of which is tangentially related to Kuewa (boxing up the old ports to ship to Camarillo where a guy is restoring an old boat too.) How did we ever live the rest of life when we were both working?

What I had been doing at the boat was the usual:  Chisel out bad wood...sand underlying fiberglass...mark and cut template...mark and cut 5 new fiberglass sheets...clean old fiberglass with acetone...lay fiberglass...grind and sand...apply Bondo...sand and fair. On to the next. I laid the last ten layers of fiberglass on the last two port openings on Friday. Very happy to have that part done.

I'll need to tab three more small bulkheads before the final finish is applied to the interior of the cabin sides. Stronger (almost) every day.

Laminators Anonymous

Hello, my name is Tony, and it's been 22 days since my last post. The reason for the silence is that the work is plodding. The cabin trunk exterior is ready for paint and the interior should be painted also, before installing the new ports. The idea was to remove the 8 old opening ports and prep the inside for paint. The reality is:  this is daunting. The pictures show it.

The last post showed this port with clamps gluing the delaminated glass back together. This is the repair of the damaged wood.

Forward of that, the gap in the delaminated glass was so big that I stuffed saturated glass cloth into the space. Clamping would have made the laminate too thin so stuffing and build-up was the strategy here. This is on the starboard side in the forepeak.

Here's the same port with the opening edge faired, the bad wood removed, and the bulkhead sanded, ready for glassing. Note how close the opening is to the bulkhead. There may not be enough room for the new port, so the opening needs to be moved forward some.

Same port finished, with tab to bulkhead. I got lazy cutting the cloth to fit the opening and just slapped it over. Of course, it gets cut out for the new port.

This is the exterior of the same port, built up with 14 layers of glass over the aft end so the cut-out for the new port can be further forward.

This looks remarkably similar, but is in the main cabin on the other side. There was a lot of damage in the wood above the port, presumably from a leaky cabin top hand rail mounting bolt. All these leaks were so small that I never saw any water collect anywhere but they did a lot of damage over time.

This is the fun one, in the head. The cabin top had old fashioned dorade vent boxes that were leaking when I bought the boat. Right after, I replaced the dorades with solar powered vent fans. I've checked when lots of water was coming aboard and when shooting them with a hose and have never seen a drop come through these solar vents. They are surprisingly waterproof. But the damage was already done. Note the scenery out the port has changed from marina to bucolic.

The water had run unseen above the headliner to the bulkhead and the wood around the port. The bulkhead was not sealed/secured properly so water got in on top of it. Lots of delamination and some rot. Here I'm in the process of removing the delamination and old tabbing. The square opening in the lower part of the picture used to house a propane heater for the forepeak. It will be filled with plywood. Right now it's a handy escape hatch to the forepeak, in case you really had to get out of there fast.

First 6 layers of glass going on the bulkhead to build back up to original strength and thickness. This bulkhead repair needs to be done now so the cabin trunk repair ties into the bulkhead tabbing structurally and visually after the paint goes on. Note the bucolic girl is now upside down. At least I hope it's her and not the boat. (The purpose of the cardboard is to block the sunlight. Since I'm inside the dark head compartment, without it I can't see the work area at all.)



So paint prep turned into other fun stuff. Five-and-a-half port openings done (not counting the big window layup) 2 1/2 more to go. Every day we make a little progress and the boat gets stronger. Laying, grinding, bondoing, sanding.... But right now I better be off to that Laminators Anonymous meeting.

GeoPetroPolitics

If you read Kuewa's history, you may have seen that her hull and deck were laid up in 1973. There's a good chance Islander Yachts had just completed laying up the first two-thirds of the cabin /deck laminate in October 1973 when the Arabs stopped selling oil to the US, quadrupling polyester resin prices. I think Islander must have stopped work for a while, and when they started up again, they didn't do a good enough job cleaning all the dust off the partial layup, and probably started using less resin. The result is that the inner one-third of the laminate is not bonded well to the rest of it in a lot of places, and not at all in others. I've seen this all along the starboard side at every opening so far.

I'm now working on the smaller ports forward of the big fiberglassing job. There is some more delaminated wood from water intrusion, just like further aft, along with the delaminated fiberglass. The fix for the fiberglass is to mix some thickened epoxy filler and try to stuff it into the space as best I can, then clamp. So far it's working pretty well. The new ports are clamps themselves so this will help hold things together. The short screws that held the old ports actually pried the laminate apart.

Delaminated everything.

 Drawing a paper template. The port opening was red from tape on the outside due to rain. Waterproof stucco tape leaves less reside if you can get the tape off within 24 hours or so.

The fix for the 1/8" thick delaminated wood is the same as before: chop it out and lay glass in it's place.

Five layers of X-mat.












I got the quote today from New Found Metals for the 12 opening ports, the equivalent of 5 months or so of cruising. But without them I couldn't go at all.