May 15, 2008

By Eric Privé

I know it has been a while since my last log but there has not really been a lot to tell except we are still working on the boat. I grossly underestimated the time it would take for the two main jobs we have been doing. The painting of the deck and the painting of the mast!

Painting the deck has taken so much time because we had to remove all the gears that are bolted to the deck. After the removal we had to sand, wash, prime, paint, paint and then paint again with a two part epoxy paint. Just mixing the paint requires 30 minutes for each batch. There is a non skid surface darker than the rest of the deck and that non skid area contains glass beads that have to be added to the paint or sprinkled on the paint. This non-skid added a few days if not a few weeks to the job without counting bad weather. Finally the last part but not the least was to bolt back everything using marine silicone for weatherproofing.

To paint the mast was also no small feat since first the mast had to be removed from the boat using a large crane. Winches, cleats, mast steps, etc had to be unbolted from the mast so it could be stripped to bare metal. Removing all the aforementioned items was quite a job since most of the stainless steel bolts had fused with the aluminum metal of the mast over the year in what is known as dissimilar metal corrosion. Once stripped, the aluminum had to be washed with a special solvent, then prime with an aluminum 2 part primer and then top coated within 24 hours with a two part epoxy not once but three times. Notice the 24 hours caveat !! Well what if the weather does not cooperate !! That is what happened to us the first time around. So, with suppressed frustration we sanded the mast back down and started over. I say we, because, we did have a lot of help for a while. First our friends Terry and Violet from the sailboat Southwind III helped for a few weeks before they had to fly back to Canada and then Pascale’s parents flew to New Zealand to help us. Thanks to all of you.