A Monumental Task!

Now that we're settled into our tiny condo, I wanted to write about last month's painting project on Nirvana's deck.  Between removing the hardware, removing/cleaning the adhesive from the hardware, filling all the holes with silicone to prevent leaks, making repairs to the deck with filler, injecting a soft portion of the deck with epoxy, and then prepping the entire deck by taping, covering, cleaning, sanding, priming, then sanding & cleaning again before painting ... this was a monumental task!  Oh, and then there's the weather to contend with ... no painting if there's wind, rain or high humidity.  It was really hard to work all of this into our schedule that also included downsizing, moving and trying to make a paycheck.  Never again!

Removing hardware and making repairs ...

Lots of taping ... BTW, 3M Blue Tape sucks!

We spent most of the first week of October getting the final prep done on Nirvana's deck. We washed the boat, then sanded the non-skid areas with maroon Scotch Brite pads & the smooth areas with regular sandpaper, and then wiped everything down with Acetone after hitting it with a blower. Afterwards, we washed the boat again.  We then covered the ports & hatches with paper & taped them up, as well as taped other areas that we didn't want painted.  We used 3M Blue Tape, and it was crap.  While it stuck to areas of the boat, it wouldn't stick to itself.  This made covering the ports & other areas difficult, and also caused us to be in a race against time with the tape. We didn't want to have to re-tape everything again ... a lot of work.

By the end of the first week were arrived to the yard with plans of spraying, only to find a large boat on either side of us!  With nobody in the boatyard to talk to, we had to postpone our plans to spray.  We needed permission to board both boats and cover them with plastic, which we needed to buy.  By the weekend, we got permission and $80 bucks worth of heavy plastic. 

The second week of October started with a very windy Monday ... way too windy to start spraying.  Wednesday was low winds & humidity ... we were going for it!  We arrived to a dry boat with no condensation on it, which was a nice surprise.  We gave the boat a quick wipe down then started removing the large hatch on the bow, the companionway hatches, the cockpit lazarette covers, and the hatch near the mast.  We covered those areas with tape & plastic, covered the hull with plastic (found some great stuff with tape already attached at car detailing store) and then covered each of the boats next to us with plastic.  We were finally ready to spray primer by around 1:00.  I was already exhausted and felt bad for Ken having to spray two coats of Interlux Primekote, which turned out to take almost four hours. Yep, ten hours in the boatyard that day!  

Boat primed!

The following morning we were back for another eight hours.  The first thing we did was get some yellow tape from a guy in the yard working on his boat. The blue tape was coming off around the ports & other areas and the nearest store was over 20 minutes away. We got lucky that he had several rolls of yellow tape, and he was happy to give it to us.  I don't know what kinda tape we borrowed, but it worked much better.  We then gave the primer a light sanding (didn't bother with the non-skid areas this time since we're going to paint those later), wiped down the boat & then sprayed Interlux Perfection on the smooth areas of the boat.  During the last two hours of spraying, the winds picked up but Ken had no choice but to keep spraying.

 After another long day in the boatyard spraying the smooth finish, we picked up the keys to our "new" condo that night ... never a dull moment!  Luckily, we had until October 31st (two weeks) to move out of the condo.  Early Friday morning we went to the boatyard to see how things were looking ... not so sure.  This morning was not so dry and the dew caused the paint to dull, which we expected and were fine with .. we kinda like it.  What concerned us was a few inconsistencies in the paint.  We figured we'd give the paint some more time to cure before deciding if the paint job was doomed, so Ken went to work at his regular job that day and I brought a few loads of clothes and personal items to our new condo. 

After a weekend of downsizing, Ken made a quick trip to the boatyard that Monday to put some of the boat pieces that were sprayed separately back on Nirvana ... and still wasn't happy with the paint job.  He worked so hard on this project ... ugh!  Not only are there some inconsistencies, but the boat picked up Ken's shoe print easily and it wouldn't wipe off.  We can only figure that the high winds during the last couple of hours of spraying messed things up with the paint application. The good news is that most of the boat is non-skid, which we already planned on painting with a roller once we're back in the marina.  The cockpit (a real PITA to paint) and the majority of the smooth areas seem okay, so we're hoping that we can touch up a few areas with a roller soon.  It won't be perfect, but we're alright with that.  Heck, we'll be living on this boat and scuffing her up anyways .. we just want a good, protective finish.  I don't have any pictures of the paint job yet since we'd been busy, but hopefully I'll have some decent pictures after doing a few touch-ups soon.

A couple of weeks ago, Ken also started another project ... the stuffing box.  After removing the old packing in pieces (we'd never done this since owning the boat), Ken noticed that the shaft seemed to be in bad shape.  Of course, this lead to the decision to remove the shaft which lead to ... geez, that's another project .. and another post!

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!