Bottom paint goes on

Saturday 30 Oct, re-launch 2021, HHN day 31: Bottom sanding and antifoul painting, varnishing wood surrounds for mirrors, anchor chain laid out ready for markers, aft deck finally cleared, boom lights fixed … again.

Up super early today, because Nacho said he would be here to start sanding the hull at 7am. But at 7 no sign of him. Finally get a knock on the hull at 7:45. Hmmm could have done with that extra 45 minutes sleep!

I had planned to sand and paint the hull myself, by hiring a sander and vacuum equipment, but Nacho gave us a deal I could not refuse. While he sets up for sanding, I do the part only I am allowed to do: masking off the waterline. 3 years ago we had painstakingly found the original waterline markers from the factory and reestablished it. We don’t want to lose it again due to shoddy masking-off.

By the time I’m around the boat with the tape, Nacho is already ½ way down one side with the sander. And it looks like he is doing a great job. By midday he is already mixing paint for the first coat.
Now, here is a thing. 2 years ago, thinking we were heading across the Pacific, I had bought 3 gallons of antifoul paint and stored it in the bilge – knowing that Pacific islands would be super expensive for antifoul. Now that I get it out the bilge I discover that we have 1 tin of Micron-Extra and 2 tins of Micron CSC. Just how on earth did that happen? I always only use Micron-Extra, so where on earth did the CSC come from?
We can hardly take them back 2 year on, so we decide to apply the CSC anyway. The colour is apparently the same and the name difference is only in the concentrations of nasties in the paint, in other words the 2 paints are compatible. We think about mixing the 3 together, but decided to just paint it on, 1 tin at a time. Hmmm, as it turns out, it was a big mistake.

Just as Nacho is almost finished with the 1st coat, I come down to look. I’m not so happy when I find he had used 2 ½ gallons on just one coat. Normally I get 2 coats out of 3 gallons! I would not mind if it was coated thick and even, but it looks very unevenly applied to me, thick and dripping in places and very thinly applied in others. He says we need another 2 gallons for a second coat – at $250 per gallon that’s $500 more paint than I would have used ☹.

Once he had left for the day, I scout around the local shops for more paint. No where had Micron Extra and there are only 2 gallons of dark blue CSC available, one in Deale hardware store and the other in West Marine. I buy them but at the same time I wonder if I should even apply second coat. I mean, just how bad can it get with just 6 months in the water?

While pondering on this question, it’s time to finally clear the aft deck which till now has remained pretty cluttered with boxes, the Ultra anchor, the new Jordan Series Drogue and a bunch of other stuff. The drogue comes out of its wet cardboard box and put into its stowage bag and off into the forepeak. Next, the anchor comes down to the ground on a halyard, ready to connect to the newly galvanized chain. We had it regalvanised for $400 at Baltimore Galvanizing. About ¼ the price of a new galvanized chain. It had come back, re-galvanized, a year ago and I had kept it in a box by the boat. Now, in the evening, I haul it out the box and lay it on plastic in 10m lengths. We will add chain markers every 10m then haul it back up into the boat.

In the evening, 2 jobs. Firstly, having re-newed the bathroom mirrors, Oana has agreed to my plan to frame them, top and bottom, with strips of varnished teak. Some scrap teak strips that I had “procured” and they were previously shaped and ready for Oana’s approval, but not yet varnished. So, the saloon table becomes a varnishing bench … covered in cardboard I might add.

Second job is to fix the boom LED lights. The original boom lights (to light up the cockpit) were 24v bulbs. But they continually attracted salt water and failed regularly. So in 2017, I replaced them with an LED strip. Now, LED strips runs on 12vdc, and 12v only. First lesson 4 years ago was the boat’s 12v supply was OK to power LEDs until such time as you started to charge the batteries at ~13.2v … at which point the boom LED strip blows (stopped working, due to over voltage). Next modification was to add a small 24v to 12v converter and power the LEDs from the 24v supply. This worked for one season then the converter blew, so I replaced it with the same.
Now come to recent times: after the rig went back up last week, I found the replacement 24-12v converter not working again. So, I searched for a different model and found a converter used on golf carts, specifically to power LEDs. It will take anything from 18-48vdc and output exactly 12vdc.
This little unit arrived today from Mrs.Amazon, and I spent the rest of the evening wiring it into the boom light circuit. The result: the boom lights work again 😊 Fingers crossed this is finally the end of the boomlight issues, and I can get onto better things!

As we retire to bed, we send a message to Nacho, asking him not to come tomorrow for the 2nd coat of antifoul. We will decide in the morning what to do about that. But for now, its full-on zzzzzss.