| Aphelion Refit |
July 3, 2007 With most of the major preparation work now complete, it all came down to the details. After a dump run in the morning, I began today with a final sanding on the areas that I had filled a third time last Friday; I used 220 grit paper on a finishing sander to sand away the excess filler and blend the final coat with the surrounding areas. This completed the major (using the term relatively) fairing on the hull. All that remained was a bit of hand work. I started with the cove stripe recess, and hand-sanded both sides of the boat with 80-120-220 grit paper to remove remaining paint and smooth the area. On the port side, the molded recess had a few areas amidships where the recess was either improperly molded or damaged by some former sanding effort over the years. I spent some time with the coarse sandpaper repairing these few areas so that the recess--and thereby the covestripe--would be straight, true, and of consistent width. |
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| With the cove stripe sanded, I moved on to the top edge of the hull, where it rolled in slightly before meeting the deck and toerail. I couldn't reach this area with mechanical tools, so now I had to sand it by hand to remove the blue paint and prepare it for the next steps. I moved the staging up to its full height to better reach the area, and sanded the starboard side and transom with 80-120-220 grit paper. The paint removal revealed a number of small areas that would require filler, and then more sanding, before being deemed ready for primer. |
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| Finally, I sanded and cleaned up the area on the stem surrounding the bronze stem casting. Earlier, I had applied some fairing compound to fill a large gap on the starboard side, and to generally smooth the transition between the casting and the molded recess in the stem. Now, I sanded the compound smooth and created appropriate contours for the paint, and also cleaned the remaining blue paint off the bronze casting. |
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