November 17, 2016
Acadia 40
Thursday
With two good maintenance coats of varnish, I deemed the varnish work mostly complete, and went ahead and removed the masking tape from most areas.
I wasn’t happy with how the port coaming cap had turned out, so I sanded it again to prepare for another coat of varnish, which I’d do later in the day. Meanwhile, I dismantled the staging, as I no longer needed it.
The new winches for the cabin top featured a different bolt pattern than the old ones, so I prepared the old holes for filling and marked the new holes before using a large bit to overbore the new bolt locations, removing the core so I could fill the voids with thickened epoxy.
Now that the cockpit paint and varnish work was complete, I installed the engine control panel in a bed of butyl tape, securing it with six screws.
The leading edge of the keel, where the ballast met the molded keel stub, had the usual minor crack, which the owner had opened up with a sander earlier, and now, after final preparations, I applied two layers of fiberglass over the hairline crack–a layer of 45° biax, and some lighter 90° cloth over the top. Late in the day, I applied some fairing compound over the partially-cured fiberglass. I also filled a small ground-out void in the rudder.
In the early afternoon, I had to take advantage of continuing unseasonably warm and pleasant weather to cover some boats outdoors in my care, but afterwards I finished up with another coat of varnish on the port coaming cap.
Total time billed on this job today: 4.75 hours
0600 Weather Observation:
40°, clear. Forecast for the day: sunny, 55