Friday

In a morning work session, I mostly finished up the work on Skeedeen, starting with removing the masking tape from the brightwork maintenance, and ending with reinstalling hardware and most of the wooden trim I’d removed for maintenance.

Still ahead:  Finishing up the companionway, a few odds and ends, and building a frame for a new fitted winter cover.

Total time billed on this job today:  3 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  34°, mainly cloudy.   Forecast for the day:  Cloudy with rain in the afternoon, 43°

Thursday

As is my wont, I started the day with a brief round of sanding on the companionway doors and hatches to prepare them for a second coat of maintenance varnish.  I also sanded and varnished again one of the cabintop handrails, as this one had worn strangely the season before and I wanted to get some extra coats of varnish on it now.

Armed with new fasteners, I continued with the swim platform installation, securing the three angle brackets to the transom with “bo-koo” sealant and the new #14 fasteners.

With the brackets in place, I could install the platform, securing it from beneath as needed with new fasteners through the brackets and into the teak.  This really finished off the new transom.  New scupper flaps to cover the scupper openings would come soon; they were up with Renee being faux-finished to blend with the transom.

Next, I reinstalled the three sets of stainless steel half oval moldings on the rubrails and stem.  I secured these with new fasteners and butyl sealant.

In the cockpit, I quickly wired up the new stern light, mating it with the wires left from the original installation.

In the engine room, I picked up where I left off several weeks earlier when I’d just finished painting the space.  Now, I reinstalled the large wire/hose bundle along the starboard side of the engine room as it had been originally, and a smaller bundle to port as needed.  I reinstalled the battery storage trays and left the negative engine cable loose pending the engine reinstallation sometime later.

I led new 3″ vent hose from the hull vent boxes and into the engine room, generally following what had been there originally and clamping the hoses to the boxes in the narrow spaces outboard of the cockpit.  There were three intake vents, plus the blower vent to starboard.  At the owner’s request, I replaced the electric bilge blower with a new version in the process.  ONce the large hoses were in place, I reinstalled a couple vent hoses that I’d removed for access before.

With the project winding down, I turned to one of the last items on my work list, which was to re-secure a set of socket mounts on the engine box, which held a removable tubular and wooden backrest that the owner used.  The sockets, which I’d installed some years before, had become a little loose, so I removed them and, after cleaning up the old sealant, tapped the screw holes for the next-larger fastener size (#10).  The larger fasteners fit well in the socket bases after I slightly enlarged the existing holes, and I applied sealant and resecured the sockets with the new fasteners.

Total time billed on this job today:  6 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  61°, cloudy, humid (November?)   Forecast for the day:  Cloudy and becoming cooler, 48°

Wednesday

After lightly sanding the fresh first coat of varnish on the deck areas, followed by vacuum, solvent wash, and tack rag, I applied a second coat of varnish to all areas.

This took most of the morning, and I had an unrelated commitment during the afternoon, but before leaving the shop for the day I prepared as necessary and applied the first coat of maintenance varnish to the second  sides of the companionway doors and hatches.

Total time billed on this job today:  4 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  48°, clear.  Forecast for the day:  Sunny with increasing c louds, 68°

Tuesday

To begin the day, I finished up masking the brightwork along the exterior sides of the windshield, forward hatch, handrails, and bow platform.

I didn’t have enough time to comfortably do the first coat of varnish before lunchtime, so instead I turned to the swim platform brackets.  Knowing I couldn’t reach the inside of the hull from any of the existing access ports in the cockpit, I’d come up with a plan to install the fasteners remotely, in reverse of how I removed them.  Because there was no way I could fiddle with separate washers and nuts to secure the bolts, I purchased flanged locknuts that would do the job on their own:  These nuts had a base as wide as the original washers that had been in place, and also featured a serrated mounting surface that would help lock the nuts in place.  This type of nut would also fit nicely in the end of the socket to make it easier for me to start the threads from three feet away.

After testing and proving the concept on the port side with a dry fit, I gooped up the bracket heavily with sealant and, using tape to secure the bolts from outside, used a long set of ratchet extensions to thread on and eventually tighten the nuts from inside to the extent possible, then, with the ratchet and extensions taped in place, I finished tightening the bolts from outside with a screwdriver.

I repeated the process with the starboard bracket.

The center bracket was more straightforward since there was an access hatch located so I could actually reach these fasteners.

I would have liked to continue with the angled support brackets that supported the after end of the platform, but I found I didn’t have the right screws in stock to replace the originals, so I held off for now.

After lunch, I got to work on the first coat of maintenance varnish on the windshield, companionway, helm area, handrails, forward hatch, and anchor platform.

With a bit of time left in the day, I reinstalled the trim tab cylinders and resecured them to the boat and trim tabs as necessary.

The original stern light, which I’d removed from the transom early in the project, was in poor condition, and I purchased a LED replacement, which I installed now.  I bedded the fixture and wiring hole with butyl  tape.

Total time billed on this job today:  6.75 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  40°, clear.  Forecast for the day:  Sunny, 71°

Monday

Now that the hull paint work was finally complete, I could focus on the remaining work list, including brightwork maintenance and reassembling the boat after the paint and engine room work earlier.

The remaining brightwork on deck was in generally good condition after a season.  I began as usual by removing any hardware that I could.

Next, I sanded all the brightwork with 220 grit to prepare it for the maintenance coats of varnish ahead.  Afterwards, I vacuumed and solvent-washed all areas to remove sanding dust.

During what remained of the day’s available time, I began masking around the woodwork, starting in the cockpit and helm area.  I’d finish up the outboard sides of the windshield and other areas next time.

Total time billed on this job today:  5.75 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  48°, foggy.  Forecast for the day:  Becoming sunny, 68°

Friday

After an overnight cure, the clear coating on the transom looked just as good or better as just after spraying.  This pleased me.

With the spraying finally complete, I was anxious to remove all the masking and get a first look at things with the boat fully exposed once more.  After several weeks with the boat wrapped up and inaccessible, I looked forward now to getting on with the final work list before completing the project for now.

Next:  Reinstalling the swim platform, hardware, and trim tabs; and the remaining brightwork maintenance.

Total time billed on this job today:  1 hour

0600 Weather Observation:  46°, mainly cloudy.  Forecast for the day:  Clearing, 66°

Thursday

After allowing the new lettering to cure for over 40 hours, I applied numerous sprayed-on coats of clear Alexseal over the entire transom.  Renee had warned me that sometimes the first applications over the fresh gold leaf and lettering paint could cause some minor compatibility issues, but fortunately I didn’t see any evidence of this, and after six coats applied over several elapsed hours, the transom was looking good and hopefully complete.

Total time billed on this job today:  5 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  42°, overcast, fog.  Forecast for the day:  Clearing, 63°

Tuesday

During the early morning, Renee finished up work on the lettering with the hand-painted outline around the letters.  After a series of discussions, we’d eventually chosen an outline to match the hull color, stars and stripes blue, which she custom-mixed on site.  I didn’t bother her much during this process, so other than one photo showing some of the masking she installed to define some of the straight lines, I have photos only of the end result.

The fresh paint needed a full day’s curing time before I could think about overspraying with clear coat, which would finish off the work on the transom, so in the meantime I continued work on some of the loose parts, including cleaning up the swim platform brackets, exhaust flapper, and trim tab cylinders to get them ready for reinstallation in the foreseeable future.  I didn’t bother trying to remove all the old bottom paint, since these would all be painted again, but focused on cleaning up bearing surfaces and places where the paint had been brought too high in the past, and where crusty old masking tape was still in place from some long-ago painting.

Later, I sanded and revarnished the loose hatches and trim pieces.

Total time billed on this job today:  3 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  30°, partly clear, dusting of snow overnight.  Forecast for the day:  Gradually becoming sunny, 39°

Monday

With the transom now ready, Renee was back to do the lettering, which would be gold leaf with a painted outline and would take two days.

After initial layout, tracing the lettering outlines on the transom, and marking certain areas with masking tape (I missed most of this stage as I had to be away at a brief appointment), Renee applied sizing to the transom, brushing this on for each letter.  The sizing is what holds the gold leaf in place.

Once the sizing tacked up sufficiently, it was time for the gold leaf, which is applied in small sheets and left proud of the lettering edges for now.

Once all the gold leaf was applied, she burnished it to remove the excess and provide some of the finished character to the leaf itself.  This begins to highlight certain areas of the leaf and provide various visual tricks depending on the lighting and viewing angle.

To enhance the appearance of the main lettering (name), the owner chose a convex burnished effect for the letters, which makes the lettering look carved or raised depending on the viewing angle and lighting.  This is a deceptively simple effect created by burnishing roughly half the letters’ width in a particular pattern, using thin paper cutouts as guides, but the end result was amazingly convincing and would look even better later after the outline and then the final clearcoats were applied over the whole area.

Some closeups of the completed gold leaf:

While this was going on, I worked in the woodshop to clean up the stainless steel half oval trim pieces from the boat, preparing them for reinstallation in the near future.  I cleaned out old sealant from the back sides and polished the exteriors to remove surface rust.

Next, I worked on the various loose varnished trim pieces from the boat, which I’d previously prepped and sanded.  Now, I applied the first of probably a couple coats of maintenance varnish to each.

Total time billed on this job today:  2 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  23°, cloudy.  Forecast for the day:  Cloudy and windy, showers, 42°

Saturday

To prepare the transom for the lettering and additional steps, I wetsanded the sufficiently-cured clearcoat with 320 grit till it was smooth, flat, and dull all over.

Total time billed on this job today:  1 hour

0600 Weather Observation:  23°, clear.  Forecast for the day:  Sunny, 46°