January 3, 2017
Halcyon 3
Tuesday
During the morning, I finished up the bottom stripping, taking care of the last large section on the port side, then moving all the jackstands and removing the paint in those areas as well.
When the boat hauler delivered the boat to the shop earlier, he’d not been able (or willing) to raise the bow of the boat enough to block the boat level; the forward end of the keel ended up a little lower than the aft end because of the limitations of the boat trailer. This didn’t necessarily pose any immediate problems, but frankly it was irritating me since it just looked bad and was poor practice, and later I knew I might want the boat to be properly leveled in all directions for some of the interior work.
Fixing the issue was straightforward: I used the forward jackstands to raise the boat enough so I could slip in a taller block to raise the forward end to an equal height as the existing aft blocking, and to bring the base of the keel level along its long length. Since this keel was parallel to the waterline, this also meant that for all intents and purposes the boat was level fore and aft.
Afterwards, I leveled the boat side to side as well.
The bottom gelcoat was in good condition overall, but there were various little dings, scrapes, and pockmarking spread around the area–all the things one expects in a 50 year-old (or thereabouts) boat. After surface preparations, I applied some epoxy fairing compound here and there on the bottom to address these minor surface issues.
Total time billed on this job today: 6 hours
0600 Weather Observation:
30°, cloudy. Forecast for the day: clouds, possible light wintry mix, then wintry mix to rain overnight