January 23, 2025

Danusia Phase 2-16

Thursday

With six successful coats in place, the brightwork project was complete, and I could turn to removing the masking tape and cleaning up from the job.

I didn’t expect that it would require virtually the full day to remove the masking tape, but that’s what it took; this was OK, since I wanted to give the fresh varnish some cure time before I moved on to the next part of the project, which would be refreshing the nonskid, and it was too soon to think about masking near the new varnish anyway.

As I went, I also cleaned up any small amounts varnish from these applications that had seeped beneath the tape (usually a problem mostly at the corners of the handrails and around certain hardware), and did the best I could to remove varnish spilled during earlier applications over the years, sometimes with success, sometimes less so when there was a risk of damage to the gelcoat or the new varnish work.

Later in the day, I sanded the swashboards and cockpit table (the bottom side; the top side would require several more coats) and applied the sixth coat of varnish there.

Total time billed on this job today: 6.75 hours