Thursday

After working on an unrelated project part of the morning, I got off to a slow start with some preparation for the canvas contractor, who had been engaged to build new interior cushions, and also rebuild/reconfigure a helm cover that he’d built for the boat years before.  So to start, I cleaned out all the stuff that was stored on the v-berth, making room for him to come pattern.  While he was on board, I left him to his devices and kept my safe distance.  While he was here, he also patterned a mainsail cover for another boat at the shop; I’d set up the mast, boom, and sail for him earlier in the morning, out in the yard.

With that work out of the way, I got going with the brightwork.  Some of the trim, particularly the eyebrow but also portions of the toerail, had suffered from essentially freeze-drying damage:  small amounts of moisture beneath the varnish, when subjected to the winter’s now all-too-typical and frequent freeze/thaw cycles, basically blew the varnish off the wood in these areas.  While I’d actually stripped and revarnished the toerails the last time the boat was here (the work was done in October 2018), and the failures there were disappointing,  the eyebrows back then had shown some signs of aging, so it wasn’t as if they’d been pristine before this past winter.  Even so I was appalled when I saw their condition.  The eyebrows, and probably the toerails, where the varnish had failed in a few spots starting at the intersection with the deck–a common failure point–would require stripping; other pieces of trim, especially the trim around the edges of the cockpit, probably required stripping as well.  The windshield frame had its usual trouble spots at some of its myriad seams, issues I’d dealt with over and again during  the years, and I’d assess that as I went, though my initial feeling was that stripping the windshield was something to be scheduled for a work session in the future rather than now.

Next, I removed all the trim and hardware that I could, preparing all the loose trim pieces for their maintenance work.  This left things at a good place to start with the real work next time.

Total time billed on this job today:  4 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 30°, clear. Forecast for the day:  Sunny, windy, 50°

Wednesday

A week or so back, taking advantage of a nice day and knowing the project would soon begin, I removed the winter cover and frame from the boat.  This also allowed me to get the soda blasting contractor lined up to strip the bottom, a job that was supposed to have occurred back in the fall, but weather and other circumstances intervened and at the time we mutually agreed to postpone the work till spring.

Over a period of two days–the first of which was to wrap the boat to contain the debris, and the second to do the actual paint removal–the contractor stripped many years of bottom paint from the hull, bringing it back to bare gelcoat (green) and some remnants of an old barrier coat.  This left just a narrow band right below the boottop for me to scrape later.

This all worked out just in time, as I was ready to move Skeedeen into the shop for this year’s round of varnish maintenance (unfortunately more than either the owner or I had hoped for, since many areas seem to have been blown off by freeze/thaw cycles–more on this in the immediate future) and a few other small jobs.

Total time billed on this job today:  1 hour

0600 Weather Observation: 30°, clear. Forecast for the day:  Sunny, increasing clouds, windy, 41°