Saturday 26 Oct, HHN day 15: More painting (hull and Glen) and more skin-fitting preps. Oh, and a nice dinner out for once.
Today’s jobs start indoors, with yet more measuring, cutting and filing of the backing plates to be fitted under the galley sink. Tricky to do, hanging upside down under the galley sink!
Then time to resume the antifoul painting, for which Glen shows no enthusiasm. Fully understandable. Once outside he regains his motivation and four hours later the second coating of antifoul is completed, plus an additional once-around the waterline. The only bits remaining to paint are under the pads. They will be addressed on Monday, once the pads will get repositioned.
The most rewarding part of this job is to take off the masking tape. It gives Glen great pleasure to peel it and reveal a perfectly straight line. As we step back and admire the newly painted hull, we giggle and add one more job to the “to do” list: between the shiny vinyl blue stripe above and the freshly painted bottom, the white is somewhat of a letdown. So further cleaning or polishing is needed. Maybe we even dig out the bottle of Ceramic Pro and have another go at it on the white gelcoat … maybe.
Ray stopped by earlier on to check on our progress, and also offered to help with cutting the thru-hull fittings to size. So armed with all the needed measurements we head to the big vice in the Weaver workshop.
Measure-twice-cut-once. Once markings are done and fittings are secured in the big vice, Ray takes control of the cutting job. The five fittings are shortened in no time with an amazing electric bandsaw, especially for cutting metal. It cuts through the bronze literally like a knife through butter. It certainly helps to have all the right tools! Thank you, Ray.
Nearly 2pm by now and we are eager to have a short break and sit for a coffee. And just as we were finishing it, we have a nice surprise. Dee and Jose have been reading our blog and knew we are here, so they popped by for a short visit and chat. And brought us a large box of Walkers shortbreads. Our favorites! Thank you 🙂 Yumm-yumm, guess what we are going to have with tea later on.
While the workshop is still open, Glen ventures back there with drill and wire brushes to give some of the old fittings, that will be reused, a good clean. Much easier to do this when they are pinned in the vice. And they come up beautifully, almost like new.
We’ve had several very intense days and decide we need a break from Cloudy Bay. So we invite Ray for dinner and have a very nice evening at the Dockside restaurant. I know, we didn’t make it very far, but at least we got out of our working clothes 🙂
Back onboard, we feel the working day isn’t over yet. So Glen finalizes the shaping of two more backing plates (for the galley sink and the port cockpit drains) and we epoxy them in place. Though these were more difficult to position due to the slope they sit on, we manage to sit them successfully. We consider ourselves quite experienced now. Five down, four more to go!
The plan was to go to bed relatively early, but by the time we finish with these backing plates it’s 11.30pm already.
Weather looks rainy and windy for the night and tomorrow, and just as we get settled in bed, Glen remembers we have the bimini poles unsecured on the deck. So out he goes with some duck tape to strap them down in case we get the forecasted wind.
We finally crash in bed after midnight, as usual. So much for an early night…
