March 24 - Renovations + Thieves

Another day of sanding - yesterday and today saw the entire hull sanded a second time to prepare for epoxy and paint. This job truly sucks, but the lesson of why its important is visible on some boats in the yard whose paint is peeling off. Paint will not stick to an unsanded hull.

Byproduct of sanding is fiberglass dust - respirator and googles required.

Jillian came out to take some pictures for the blog. When I finished up and came home to review them, I noticed a hole cut in the tarp. Heading back out to investigate it became clear before I climbed up to have a closer look that the hole was perfectly cut with a knife. Looking in, the hatch was smashed open, the boat was ransacked, and the stereo and a few other things were gone. Leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Seems I'll have a few more repairs to add to the list, not to mention the purchase of a new stereo.

On the upside, 90% of the presanding is complete. All I need now is some warm weather for painting.

March 21 - Renovations

At this point I have 100 hours committed to the renovations on the boat. I spent the fall stripping 8 layers of paint off the bottom, grinding 1/4 inch of metal off the whole keel, and sanding the fiberglass to a smooth finish.

Apparently one should wear eye googles and not glasses when grinding raw iron, or so said the ER doctor as she romved the meatl from my cornea. Very pianfull. Oh and I now know the paint stripper that I used is a cancer causing agent. Wonderful.

So today I wire-wheeled the keel to remove the winter rust build-up. I do not recommend this process as steel needles rotating at high speed turned my legs into a pin cushion. Cleaned the keel up nice though.

Another pleasant suprise - after sanding off some cover up paint I found the repair job from when a previous owner had a few too many and rammed into something - hard. Oh well, just another thing to fix.