Buffing & Keel Joint.

The glass over our keel joint was starting to look a little shabby, so we decided since the boat was out of the water this winter to go ahead and grind it down and re-glass it. Not a pleasant job, but nothing a grinder and a shop-vac can't fix. It's still too cold at night to do some of the work on it, so it is going to wait patiently until the weather gets a little warmer- but at least it's ready to go when it does warm up.

Then the buffing.

The last time the boat was out of the water, I was working on painting the mast on days where it was warm enough to do any good buffing work- so the buff/wax job was utilitarian, but not stellar. This year I have enough time to really work at it and get it right. I've also found the right combination of products and methods to get a really nice finish. 3M has a nice product selector guide on their website. Let's see: Oxidation + Gelcoat + General cleanup = 3M heavy duty compound with a white wool pad + 3M Finesse-it II with a yellow polish pad + 3M Scotchguard marine wax. The final product is STELLAR!

The Bow:

Before-

and the After (the odd shadow in the gelcoat is the reflection of my ladder and the ground)-

and down the side (note that I'm doing the work in sections to be sure that the compounded and finished areas don't sit for days without a coat of wax to protect them...)

Before:

And the after- you can see the difference of where I have done and not done yet...

Just a couple of quick notes- I found with the Finesse-it that after I was done with the initial polish that if I went back and did a second polish that it really improved the finish. Also, using less of this product at a time is best- I found a dollop about the size of a quarter worked well.

The weather is nice again today, so I'm off to do more compounding/polishing/waxing.

Bearing arrived and warm weather projects

The bearing arrived from AUS this week. I'm glad that even though that was a hassle, it was able to be resolved.
Warm weather (50's & 60's) this weekend is going to allow for some more projects. I'll post more as they progress. Keel joint work today, buffing tomorrow!

keel joint

Started work yesterday in the warm weather on reglassing the keel joint. The previous job of it was not very high quality (never have your boat repaired while on vacation), so it's time to grind it off and start over. Not a big deal, just a lot of work...

Also guessing that the bearing for the winch will arrive this week.

Outboard maintenance

With it still being too cold to really get done what I need to on the boat, I figure it's a good time to do the season prep on the outboard. A couple of warmer days next week should allow for some work on the next boat project...

Australia & Props...

Well, I finally got the timing and got through to ARCO in Australia on a non holiday. The very helpful gentleman I talked to on the phone sounded like he might have had some nice libations yesterday to celebrate :-) The bearing for the winch will be here next week. In typical "no longer in business or production" style, the shipping will cost more than the part.

I also got a call from Martec Engineering who I sent our Martec folding prop in to be refurbed. Turns out it's probably the original prop from 1988 and has had electrolosys issues and needs to be replaced, not refurbed. So that budget item tripled- yikes! But at least it will be nice and new.

Australia Day

Leave it to me to call Australia on a national holiday... didn't realize until this morning why my dialing would have been going unanswered last night. I guess I wouldn't answer on the 4th of July, so I'll try again tonight.

Frustrating missing bearing in winch

So I'm putting the Barient 32 back together and discover I'm missing a bearing! I'm always very carefull about not losing parts when I'm working on winches- and it's an internal bearing, not one of the ones that falls in the water when you take a drum off- so I know that I didn't lose it, it wasn't there when I took it apart. So I've contacted ARCO in Aus to see how soon I can get one. Oh, the joys...

Winches- another project...

There's always another project when you own a boat, especially an older one. It's too cold to work on buffing or bottom painting, so I'm doing what I can indoors. Current project: Winches. The 2 primary winches in the cockpit are Barient 32 self tailers. These differ from the normal Barients in that the whole gear structure is a contained unit that is removable. So I took one off yesterday and brought it home.

Here is the gear unit and the drum.

The next step is getting the gear unit apart so the parts can be cleaned, lubed, and re-assembled.

On a winch this big and complicated, I clean it up in sections- that way there is less confusion in the jigsaw puzzle of getting it back together. Smaller winches don't have many identical parts, so it's less of an issue.

Some 2008 photos

This was the first leg of the local Double Handed Race... Sequoia is the big stick in the lower right. We finished 5th out of 14 in our class.
























This is another shot from the Double Handed Race. Aircraft shots are hard to get, thanks to the club for arranging it! (we're the lower boat)























And early Wed night "beercan" race. Sequoia is second from the left with the Red/Orange/Yellow spinnaker.





















Here's the finish of that early Wed night race- what a gorgeous night!

On the hard- and more maintenance...

Sequoia came out of the water in early December. There had been a steady stint of high pressure coupled with north winds that always push much of the depth out of our little creek, so we had to wait until just the right time to catch a south wind at high tide. The boat came out and looked good. The bottom paint has lasted two seasons and is just about gone- which is perfect. Only a light sand and repaint will keep it protected without all the buildup that we sanded off a couple of years ago. Hindsight on that project showed that spending the $$$$ on soda blasting would have been the better method.

We had a great season on the boat. We did some more casual racing with the club since the boat we crew on was racing less. We also did another Governor's cup race, but snagged a crab pot about 25 miles into the race and ended up DNF. We also took two weeklong cruises, one in the spring and one in the fall along with various weekenders.

Things have been pretty busy with the holidays, plus one of our pups has a terminal bone cancer and is not long for the world- so the boat has been sitting patiently on jacks. As always with any boat, especially an older boat (it's now been 20 since Sequoia was trailered out of the factory in CA), there is the constant maintenance list...