Investigating the rudder shoe

When I started the bottom job project, I had a chance to check the rudder fittings. I noticed a crack in the fiberglass over where the rudder shoe was located at the aft-end of the keel. I was concerned that the crack may be a sign of corrosion in the bronze rudder shoe itself.  Bronze doesn't rust but it does suffer from electrolytic corrosion. The boat rudder rests and rotates on top of this shoe, which is bolted onto the keel. If the rudder shoe fails, the rudder may fall down to Davey Jones' locker.  That would be bad. 

A crack in the fiberglass over the rudder shoe.

Sanding away at the fiberglass layer over the rudder shoe, I discovered that the rudder shoe is fine, with no external signs of corrosion. (Can't find the photo! But trust me.) Because the rudder shoe is made of bronze (note the green oxidation stains) which suffers far less from crevice or pit corrosion in oxygen-deprived environments, there's no need to remove it entirely to additionally check the inside of the shoe for corrosion (unlike chainplates made of stainless steel which do suffer from crevice/pit corrosion and so should be removed entirely when checked.)  The crack was just a thin layer of fiberglass matting that had delaminated off of the bronze rudder shoe. Bronze is far superior to stainless steel for underwater use but like any metal it is subject to electrolytic corrosion aka stray current corrosion. Also, fiberglass-to-metal bonds never last, and inevitably will delaminate. Potentially this exposes the bronze underwater fitting to stray current corrosion once the bronze touches seawater. But this was not a big problem to fix since there was no corrosion. All I had to do was scuff up the shoe surface so it had some "tooth"and then encapsulate the bronze shoe under new layer of fiberglass to isolate it from the external sea water & so avoid electrolytic corrosion. 

The rudder post seemed fine but
we'll see more once I drop the rudder entirely

Investigating further, the rudder post seemed fine, the rudder itself seems fine and is made of solid fiberglass (as with the centerboard) with no signs of water intrusion or delamination. I had repacked the rudder stuffing box but since I've decided to drop the rudder entirely, I will be loosening that up again too.

Here's the funny thing. While stripping the bottom plain off of the rudder, it became apparent that someone had put epoxy barrier coat (gray) over the bottom paint (red). Bottom paint which is not meant to be permanent, is hardly a good base for epoxy barrier coat paint, which is meant to be permanent. I'm guessing someone was doing a rush job, ad instead of sanding off the red bottom paint, decided they could hide it all under a layer of gray barrier paint anyway, so who would know? Not the owner.  Luckily the epoxy barrier coat did stick, mostly.  I'll have to it all off of course, but this, to me, is yet more proof that in the marine services industry, you really have to do it yourself and can't rely on yard workers to care as much about your boat as you.  

Stripping Bottom Paint

One of the benefits of the new yard location for Whimsy is that we're allowed to do our own bottom-jobs. (Due to environmental concerns, most yard won't allow this.) Needless to say the red anti-fouling bottom paint on my boat had long expired and needed to come off. I also wanted to check everything under the waterline, to make sure there were no hidden surprises under the anti-fouling, and to take care of a couple of projects including checking the rudder shoe.

Options for removing old antifouling bottom paint layers are: sanding, stripping with chemical stripper, or blasting (usually with something relatively soft like walnut shells, to avoid damaging the fiberglass gelcoat beneath the antifouling). Since blasting was not allowed in the yard and I wasn't a sucker for punishment of sanding, I decided to try the paint stripper option. Let me emphasis just how horrible sanding a boat bottom is: the paint is a biocide so you have to wear protective clothing and masks, in 90+ hot muggy weather, as you exhaust yourself  waving a heavy grinder upside-down, pressing it up against the bottom of the boat, as sweat mixed toxic dust rolls down into your eyes and you can't breathe easily through the mask. This is one of the worst boat-repair chores there is.

I bought pail of Peel Away paint stripper from the local hardware store (about $50/pail), and tried a test patch on my hull. This material is basically drain opener chemicals but in cream form, which you smooth over the hull with a 1'4" notch trowel. Cover it with the paper/plastic sheets provided, tape the sides of the paper down to make sure the stuff stays moist for as long as possible, and wait overnight.

 The chemical stripper worked amazingly well when washed-off with a power washer.  It came off easily, leaving only small stubborn spots of red bottom paint that sanded-off easily.   

The area around my boat was an environmental atrocity, flooded with several inches of orange-colored slurry. (The main ingredient of bottom paint is copper, which is a biocide.) And once it all dried, the antifouling turned into dust and settled on everything including my car and my coffee cup. Yet this is normal in the yard, and worse has been happening here for several decades since the Navy owned the place. I suspect this is where I will catch cancer!

WARNING: Peel Away is highly corrosive so I suggest taking all the necessary precautions (especially eye protection and gloves.) A little bit of it was accidentally smeared on the inside of my wrist, under the glove, and now have a scab there. I'd hate to think what could happen if even the dust from the dried-up material got into anyone's eyes - so I suggest not only eye protection but also keeping a water hose nearby and handy as an emergency eyewash station. 

The stuff I used was the regular hardware store version of Peel Away that comes with a plastic spreader, some pH testing strips, and the plastic/paper sheets used to cover the area being treated, and a packet of neutralizing powder (which I suspect is a mild citric acid. Vinegar also works.) Peel Away makes a "safe" version for use on boats that won't damage underlying gelcoat, which I also tried. (Since my boat had an epoxy barrier coat under the antifouling, I wasn't worried about gelcoat damage using the regular stuff.)  The "safe" marine version is slightly runnier, so you need a better trowling technique especially on the upside-down surfaces of the keel, to avoid plopping the stuff all on the ground. They were both equally effective.


I had to buy 6 pails of Peel Away to complete the project but in the end I got a nice clean hull with no sanding. Of course, then I had to sand it all with 80 grit in preparation for the new coat of barrier paint. While sanding, I occasionally accidentally went through the old barrier coat and got to see the gelcoat underneath, which while crazed was still in decent condition. There's no sign of pox or blisters; boats as old as Whimsy generally didn't have problems with blisters. I figure, if there was going to be osmotic blistering, she would have shown it by now. However a couple of extra coats of epoxy barrier coating won't hurt either

Also, while the antifouling is gone, I want to check out the rudder shoe and investigate a worrying crack in the fiberglass around there.

Moving to new boatyard

The boatyard where I started working on Whimsy has decided to gentrify, cater to big fancy catamarans and open a seafood restaurant. Needless to say DIY-type liveaboard types were no longer welcome and we were given a deadline of Nov 30 to leave the yard. Which is too bad because it was a great location, very centrally-located to all the stores I regularly visited plus relatively close to my storage lockers where I keep my tools and supplies.

St John's River

Unfortunately the new yard is not nearly so well-situated, though only 30 minutes West of my previous location. The nearest store is a 20 minute drive; the nearest hardware store is an ACE branch that is not really adequately stocked compared to the large Lowes and Home Depot I used to visit, and getting to my storage unit is a pretty long drive. Not to mention the new yard is almost twice as expensive and the boats are jammed together quite tighly (that may resolve as more of the snow-bird Canadians splash their boats soon.)

On the more positive side, the new boatyard is obviously more oriented towards the DIY crowd. There are grizzled old snaggle-toothed guys here who look like they've been working on boats their entire lives. Actually some of the boats here look like they're pretty permanently on-the-hard too. Yet there are plently of cruisers -- lots of Canadians -- who are working diligently on their boats from early in the AM when the rooster crows (yes, there are chickens and ducks running around too) 'til dusk and sometimes into the night, sanding and polishing and painting things. It reminds me of the mothership scene in Water World, the post-apolocalyptic movie with Kevin Costner. 

But I see all this as just further encouragement to get going and finish up my project.

More importantly, this yard allows people to do their own bottom-jobs (though no blasting) so that allows me to save a lot of money rather than having a yard do it. The estimates I was hearing were well over $2500. The cost of the move to the new yard was $1400 but apparently most of that is in the loading/unloading of the boat, the mileage itself is quite reasonable. That means that I could have kept going south to a boatyard that was a in a warmer clime  - and I may still do so, since I can't paint the boat with the average temps around here for Jan and Feb. On the other hand, there are enough other  projects to keep me busy until the weather warms up. 

Giant bow cleats

Living through a few hurricanes, I've learned to get the biggest, strongest bow cleats I can get. These are 12" long, solid bronze. For some reason no bolt-holes have been drilled in their feet. I think I'll go with 5/16th stainless steel bolts, and with appropriately-sized 1/4" G10 laminate backing plates.

Hurricane Dorian

Hurricane Dorian was a near-miss for us in St. Augustine, Fla. However that didn't mean I still didn't have to pack up everything and prep the boat for a hurricane.

The workshop came down, all the tools and supplies are now in storage units, but I kept a fridge and electric kettle under the boat. All of that took quite a bit of time but having prepped for hurricanes twice already, it was all old hat. I'm not resetting-up the work shed because I have to move this boat in a couple of months anyway

Dorian brought us a few inches of flooding in the yard. Irma and Matthew each brought about 2 feet of flooding, in comparison. I stayed onboard through Irma and Matthew but this time, due to the cats, I decided to go to a hotel. Having air conditioning for a few days was nice.

I feel awful for the folks in the Bahamas however. Those places weren't 20 feet above sea level, not sure how anyone can survive once the surge alone is over 20 feet. The whole place would have been underwater. I think we're going to need new charts too.

Safe working loads of shackle blocks

I'm a fan of Garhauer Marine's blocks because they're pretty solid things that seem like they can take a pretty good beating, and relatively inexpensive. Practical Sailor has rated them well too, and they generally get good reviews on various forums and websites. People have good things to say about their quality and especially about their customer service.

However I am somewhat disappointed in the statements regarding the safe working load (SWL) for their shackle blocks. I bought several of their single stainless steel 60-13-sized shackle blocks and noticed that the shackles seemed a little smaller than what I expected. So I read the website a little more carefully: The Garhauer website states they use 1/4" shackles, and that the blocks have a SWF of 3500 lbs.

The 1/4" shackles made by Wichard have a SWL of about 1800 lbs. So I don't understand how the Garhauer shackle blocks could have a SWL of almost double a high-quality 1/4" shackle.

I sent an email to Garhauer to ask; they replied that the website was incorrect and that these were 5/16th shackles. So I measured the shackles on the 4 blocks I had purchased:

The pin diameter was 19/64th, which is  I guess within tolerance of 5/16ths.

However the shackle body was not that size. The shackle body is slightly rectangular, not round. The "inside" diameter of the saddle was 15/64 and the "outside" diameter was 9/32 -- these are both pretty much 1/4".

I wrote back to Garhauer and they replied that shackles are measured by their clevis pin diameter. They are not actually,

Shackles are sized according to the diameter of the bow section rather than the pin size.

(Specifically by the diameter of the "saddle" in the bow-section.)

But in any case I replaced the shackles on my blocks with "true" 5/16th shackles. (I measured it to be sure)

It is important to note that the strain on shackles have to be centered on the pin, by using washers to act as spacers. If the strain is placed on one end, you could end up losing 70% of the SWL of the shackle.

Starting on rewiring the sailboat mast.

I was hoping to dedicate August to the mast, standing rigging and the stanchions entirely but the weather is not cooperating to allow me to finish the paint job from last month.

The 40' mast itself is in OK shape, no big dings or anything but it needs a good cleaning with vinegar and maybe an aluminum cleaning compound. I don't plan on painting the mast since that's a lot of work and really not necessary. All the old blocks, shackles and internal wiring will of course be replaced.

Looking at the masthead: The VHF antenna base was still there but seeing the singed marks on the cable, I assume it was zapped-off by a lighting strike at some point. The masthead light is the old incandescent variety, broken. The windex has fallen off.

The sheaves in the masthead sheave box are aluminum and seem to be in good shape; I will just need to replace their axle pins. The boat's original halyards were a combination of wire cable spliced to 1/2" cruising line so the existing sheaves are designed to handle wire cable. I have already bought 5/8" cruising line, and was considering changing the sheaves to use all-line rather than cable (sheaves for cable have a groove in them) but now I see switching the sheaves will involve a lot of metalwork on the sheave box (the existing slots for sheaves are too narrow to accommodate the wider halyards). So I'm going to have to go back to the combination cable-line halyards and will be splicing some 7x19 1/4" stainless cable to the line I have already bought. Since I had already bought enough line to run the lines back to the cockpit plus an extra 10 feet, that will leave a lot of extra line cluttering the cockpit - an issue to deal with when the running rigging project starts in a couple of months.

In the meantime I need to rewire the mast too. The mast doesn't have a built-in raceway for the wires; the previous owner had zip-locked the wiring together every few feet and wrapped it all in some foam insulation. I spent some time pulling out the old wiring, which was not marine-grade stuff. There was a big ball of wire, an old bird's nest, some errant foam bits and leaves blocking things up in the mast so I resorted to clearing it all by ram-rodding the mast with 4x10' lengths of PVC pipe until I was able to clear out all the junk plus the old wires.

The wires had wrapped around the internal bolts for the spreaders so I had to take the spreaders off, which was a good thing because I got a chance to inspect things and clean off the white aluminum oxide corrosion that had formed under the stainless steel spreader tangs. However the bolt threads had galled, and also I was not able to find replacement fine-thread 1/2" nyloc 316 nuts locally. The spreader tangs are currently at a machine shop so the bolts can be rethreaded, and I have ordered a couple of new nyloc nuts from BoltsDepot.com

I replaced the blocks for the spreader flag halyard lines with small Harkens. The old Sunfish brand spreader blocks had started to leave chalky residue so I'm guessing they've just about had it. I'll replace the rest of the blocks later, when I handle the running rigging. 

As for electrical wiring, I have bought a couple of Caprera 2 red/white LED spreader lights by Lumitec, to be installed in addition to a steaming/deck light. I will also need to wire the new VHF antenna plus the radar dome and the Echomax XS active radar reflector.

Mast steps are another project - I will be installing folding aluminum ones by Sea Dog, and using 1/4" aluminum rivets to secure them. I know that some insist on using Monel rivets but I don't have a rivet gun capable of handing steel rivets, and three 1/4" aluminum rivets per step should be strong enough anyway (no issues with corrosion that results from steel-aluminum contact either.)


Meanwhile, I'll just watch the dragon flies and hope for better weather... I have to remind myself this is all supposed to be fun and not a reason to stress out.

Sailboat sanding and priming continues

A proper paint job is all about surface preparation; the actual painting takes just a couple of hours but the preparation can take weeks. And if you don't prepare the surface correctly, your lovely paint job will be ruined - you'll have to scrape it all off and start over again. Aside from the time and labor required, primer costs more than a hundred dollars per gallon, and paint is about $80/quart - so a screw-up from lack of attention or cutting corners can be expensive.

After sanding off the old paint, I washed down the topside and deck/cockpit surfaces with Tide detergent applied with a deck wash brush, followed with a thorough rinse using a high-pressure washer, and then wiped it all down with alcohol applied with multiple clean paint rags. The goal was to remove any surface contamination that could interfere with the primer bonding properly to the surface.

Awlgrip Hullgard Extra primer applied to deck and cabin top

Some people use acetone to wipe down the surfaces prior to priming or painting, however acetone evaporates far too fast on a hot, sun-baked hull, so I use alcohol instead. You have to use multiple clean rags too, otherwise you'll end up just spreading the contamination around instead of removing it. Also, there can be no moisture (dew) on the surface prior to applying the primer and paint, and don't touch the surface with your bare hands either since that will transfer sweat and skin oils to the surface, which will require another alcohol wipe-down.

Patched and faired, ready for Highbuild primer

Then I applied Awlgrip Hullgard Extra primer to the topsides and deck/cockpit, using 9" Glasskoter 1/8-nap roller sleeves. Hullgard Extra is a bonding primer, intended to be used before fairing. It contains extra epoxy, to make sure it binds well to the surface it is applied to. One gallon was just barely enough for 2 coats on the cockpit/deck. For the topsides, one gallon was enough for 3 coats per each side, and just barely enough for 2 coats on the stern and one coat on the rub rails.  So that added up to three gallons of Hullgard Extra in total.

Two thick coats of Highbuild Primer, somewhat tan-colored

I panicked for a few hours because the Hullgard Extra had not really hardened after 24 hours. You could still put a dent in it with a fingernail. I was convinced I had screwed up the mixture ratio. Hullgard Extra comes in a gallon base plus a quart converter. According to the Hullgard Extra technical data sheet, the mixture was supposed to be 10:1.5.  I just poured the converter into the gallon can and mixed them up with a paint paddle attached to a drill, without a second thought to the proper mixture ratio, assuming that the converter/base kit arrived pre-measured for the proper ratio.

But when the primer had not hardened, I assumed that it was because my quart-to-gallon mixture was of course quite wrong. There are 4 quarts to a gallon, so I thought my mixture was 1-to-4 instead of 1.5-to-10. I started planning on scraping off the entire coating though it just didn't make sense to me that Awlgrip would sell so much more converter than necessary per gallon of base. I re-read the labels on the cans more carefully: while the converter can boldly states to be "One US Quart" it also said (in parenthesis) "1.05PT/.493LT". In other words the "One US Quart" converter was actually about half that amount. Similarly, the "One US Gallon" base was actually "3.785Le" ("Le" meaning liters, apparently). So the mixture ratio was correct after all, straight out of the cans. Awlgrip really needs to do a better job labeling the volumes of its product contents.

Spray-on guide coat

Anyway after 36 hours, the Hullgard Extra was hard enough to be sanded with 150 grit. That took one day per side, and two days for the deck/cockpit due to all the inside corners and details that had to be hand-sanded.

Fairing was next. The topsides came out quite fair; the problem areas were mostly around the area where the rub rails were located. I lightly filled-in those problem area with 3M Premium Filler and sanded it all smooth. I wasn't as concerned about fairing the deck because the anti-skid paint will hide most of that; I paid more attention to fairing the cabin sides and vertical surfaces of the cockpit which will not be covered with anti-skid.  There were a few pinholes and  other areas where I had sanded through the Hullgard that need some attention. Fairing only took a couple of hours in total.

I then applied two coats of Awlgrip Highbuild primer to the topsides and sanded that down with 150 grit. The Highbuild Primer was supposed to be white but it actually came out a little tan. That was actually a good thing because the contrast with the underlying white Hullgard shows the few spots where I had burned through the Highbuild by sanding too much. A two-gallon kit of Highbuild was enough for 3 coats on each side on the topsides.

I am now waiting for the delivery of some more Highbuild to prime the deck/cockpit. I plan on applying three coats for the vertical areas that will remain smooth with no anti-skid applied, and 1 or possibly 2 coats on the rest of the areas.

This whole process of removing the old paint and priming has taken about a month of sanding. Needless to say I am getting sick and tired of it. I am using a 5" Makita random orbital sander on the vertical surfaces because it is much lighter than the 6" Bosch, which I use on horizontal surfaces. I've figured out that the sanding process goes faster if you change the sanding discs quite often instead of trying to force a dull paper to last longer. Inevitably that leads to leaving scuff marks that will need to be faired.

Sanding off stipple marks

Approaching the sanding process in a systematic, section-by-section method also helps, so I broke up the areas to be sanded into approx. 4' square sections and used 2-3 discs per section. Guide coat is useful to show your progress, it helps keep track of the areas that still need to be sanded versus areas that have already been sanded. The goal was first to remove the stipple-marks left from the roller, then to go over the entire area to make it as smooth as possible. Guide coat also shows any major indentations that require more attention but I'm relying on the Highbuild to take care of most of the lighter indentations and smaller pinholes. I used the SEM spray-on variety of guide coat, but later switched to Mirka powder form. It is hard to get an even coating using the spray type because I am not working in an interior space protected from wind which blows away the spray. A little of the powder guide coat goes a long way, but dropping it causes an unholy mess.

Had fun scaring my cats with my dust mask

Once the Highbuild primer is applied to the deck/cockpit, and sanded down, I will apply the 545 finish primer and sand that down with 220 grit to 320 grit, Then, I will start the painting process. Hopefully that will be by next week, weather permitting. I expect the application of the KiwiGrip non-skid to take a couple more days, and so painting should be done by mid-August, at which time I will start on rewiring the mast, installing the stanchions, painting the locker lids and companion way hatch, and installing teak over the coamings. I will also be redoing the standing rigging in August, using Hayn fittings. Winches, cleats and other deck fittings will be installed after the mast is raised, about the time the boat goes into the water, which hopefully will be by the end of November.

Sanding off the old topsides paint and saving the boot stripe

I expected that sanding the old paint off the boat's topsides was going to be a pain. It took more than a week. I used 60-grit 6-inch sandpaper on a Bosch random orbital sander with a soft backing pad, attached to a shop vacuum. The paint was in bad shape; chalky, cracking and flaking off. Along the way I saw some repair patches where the boat had taken some bumps. I guess that the paint had been patched there too. The gel coat under the paint was still in acceptable shape - it was crazed but not cracked or falling apart, so thankfully I didn't need to sand off the gel coat too.

Since the waterline was going to be sanded away, I put some notches on the hull to mark the location of the top and bottom of the boot stripe for future reference, to paint it back with its original shape and location. Laser marks can be used to strike a straight boot stripe but boot stripes are not supposed to be perfectly straight; they're supposed to have some shear (widen, and rise up at the bow and under the counter-stern) to prevent the boat from appearing as if it is "hogging". There is no easy way to do that, except by eye-balling it, so using notches to keep track of the location of the boot stripe and waterline is the best option.

Salvaging the rubrails

My sailboat has wooden (red oak? definitely not teak) rub rails which were in bad shape and which had to be removed for the paint job. It took some effort to take them off in one piece. My goal was to try to salvage them since making new 35-foot rub rails and steam-bending them to shape was going to take a lot of time and effort.

Each rub rail actually consists of two long pieces of wood. The first was bolted onto the hull side, and the second one was glued and screwed onto that piece. (The glue holding the two parts had failed along the way in most places.) The bolt heads holding the rub rail to the hull sides were hidden underneath the second piece of wood, and the nuts were glassed-over on the inside on the hull in inaccessible places. Getting to the bolts without further damaging the rub rails was going to be difficult, but luckily the sealant used between the rub rails and hull was damaged enough that I was able to run a hacksaw blade under the rub rails to cut through the bolts holding them in place. I didn't bother trying to dig out the fasteners; I just ground them back flush with the hull.

I was able to remove the rub rails largely intact though the wood cracked in a few places along the way. I sanded the rub rails to remove the old paint and sealant, scarfed-in some patches to replace the cracked portions, epoxied the two parts together where separated, and then primed them in preparation for painting. I plan on painting them the same color as the rest of the boat.

Old boat name

While sanding the paint off the transom, I found a faint outline of the original name of the boat: Tingueby, homeport: Chicago.

Since that's a pretty unique name, I was able to identify it online as once having belonged to MF Sasgen. Interestingly, the Coast Guard records say that the boat was built in 1968, though my title says it was built in 1967.

Matthais F Sasgen Jr. was associated with the Sasgen Derrick Company in Chicago, (I'm guessing based solely on the name similarity.) He passed away in 2006 but his wife apparently lives near Port Lucie, where the boat was originally for sale. Other relatives apparently live in St. Augustine too. I sent Mrs. Sasgen a message on Facebook, asking about the boat history, -- when and where it was purchased, what color it was originally etc. -- but I have not yet received any reply. It would be nice to know about the boat a big more, like about the little love note, "MJ hearts Cappy" I found written inside the power distribution panel, or the "Glued in 1978" written in pencil under one of the drawers in the galley.

Preparing to sand the topsides: Sanding and scaffolding

Around the beginning of June, and after priming the deck top, I started getting ready to paint the topsides (that's the sides of the boat, above the waterline.)

First, I removed the skin fittings and the exhaust port and sealed up the hole, and then I built scaffolding to stand on while sanding the old and cracked blue paint off  the topsides. The old paint had started cracking and peeling off long ago, so there was no saving it. I had decided to go with a lighter color, which would be cooler in the tropics too.

The exhaust port was a fiberglass pipe built through the lazarette; removing it was simply a matter of using my oscillating tool to cut it off (I prefer to use an oscillating tool over an angle-grinder with a cut-off disc because it distributes much less dust and is much less dangerous.) Then, I cut several pieces of 1708 fiberglass mat (which combines woven roving and chopped-strand mat) to cover the hole, applied it with epoxy, covered it with a piece of plastic to minimize moisture exposure, and after it cured, I sanded it all down & faired over it with 3M Premium Filler. (The old exhaust port diameter was quite a bit smaller than the 2" dia. exhaust hose attached to it. I will be re-routing the exhaust and installing a new, larger exhaust port after I install the below-deck Raymarine autopilot.)

Then I spent some time making some pretty solid saw-horses (or trestles) to support scaffolding planks around the boat. I needed a pretty solid footing since I was going to be spending a lot of time and effort sanding off the old paint. I also hung tarps off the deck since needed some shade to work under to minimize the heat, not just for my comfort but also to allow paint to flow and spread evenly
 before drying. (Needless to say summer in Florida is not the best time to paint, but my options were limited.)

Also the "trick" to painting a boat with a roller is that it has to be done in one smooth go per side, with no stopping or slowing down along the way and no going back to re-paint a patch that you already covered, in order to maintain the 'wet edge' of the applied paint. If the paint is allowed to dry on one patch before rolling paint over the next adjacent patch, you'll see a line in the finish between the two patches. This means that you have to have a pretty solid structure to work on, with no chance of you or your paint cans and supplies falling off the scaffolding along the way as you move along at a pretty rapid pace.

A dusty breakfast

Priming the deck, cockpit, and cabin top

Around the end of May I primed the deck, cockpit and cabin top with Alwgrip Hullgard Extra. It was very hot so I did a bit of a rushed sloppy job of it but I figure most of it will be sanded off anyway. The white surface made a big difference in the temperature of the deck -- no more burning my foot soles when walking around

Boat cats

Sasha and Pasha are enjoying the boatyard and all the creepy-crawlies they can catch. I have to put separate fans near their favorite sleeping spots to keep them cool in the 98 degree heat and 90 percent humidity of a summer in Florida. For some reason Pasha loves to sleep on my computer bag.

Foredeck and aft hatch lids installed

My foredeck hatch blew off in Hurricane Irma in Sept. 2017. That was the second hurricane in 2 years I experienced in St. Augustine - the other was Matthew. When I first bought the boat, the dealer reminded me that there had been no hurricanes there in 60+ years. Well, we got hit by two in a row, but luckily they had both been reduced in strength a bit by the time they blew by us.

Newly-built exterior hatch frame

 I had been working on the deck so I had removed the hinges and lock on the hatch lid, so I put my old manual windlass on the lid to keep it shut through the storm. However due to the camber of the hatch lid and the force of the wind, the windlass gradually "walked" off the lid and fell off. I was laying down on the v-berth cushion at the time and watched as the hatch blew straight up into the air. It fell into the floodwater and floated away (we had about 2 feet of flooding in my part of the boatyard).  I didn't want to go after it because there were all sorts of sharp, pointy things flying through the air. The funny thing is that barely any rainwater got into the boat because the rain was traveling horizontally.

New v-berth hatch with frame trim piece; lotsa light in the v-berth

I decided to replace the hatch with a Lewmar Ocean 60, to get more light over the v-berth. While I was at it, I also put a Lewmar Low Profile 20 over the head as I previously wrote, and a Lewmar Ocean 40 under the boom. I had decided to install them before painting the cabin top because I didn't want to have three large holes in the ceiling while working on the boat.

Those two went in rather easily, since they required me to only cut a new opening (for the head) or slightly enlarge the existing hole for the aft hatch.

Cutting off the aft hatch frame.

The Lewmar 40 fit easily into the slightly enlarge aft hatch hole

Butyl sealer under the hatch, to be scraped off later

Installing the fore hatch was a bigger project because I had to make the existing hole slightly smaller (by about an inch all around) and build-up the rim to take the screws for the hatch. Down below, the hatch rim had to also be faired and straightened so that the ceiling camber didn't cause an unsightly gap with the frame trim piece (the hatch frame trim piece has a bug-screen which is handy.) 

I used vinyl exterior trim pieces purchased from a local hardware store along with epoxy filler to build-up the rim above and below, then spent hours sanding and shaping it. Lewmar Ocean hatches have a pretty high profile so I had to reduce the height of the rim a bit, so the whole thing wasn't sticking up too high like a turret. I brushed just one coat of gel coat beneath the rim to seal it, and didn't bother sanding it smooth because it was all going to be hidden under the hatch frame trim piece anyway.

While doing all this I noticed a suspicious, weeping bump on the deck near the hatch rim that turned out to be a small patch of rot, which had to be dug out and repaired. No big deal.

After that it was just a matter of making sure the hatch rim top was as flat as possible to minimize chances of water intrusion, and then screwing down the hatch frame using some butyl sealer and one-inch #10 screws.