Sunday 28 October: Herrington Harbor North, yard day #11 – paint 4 coats of InterProtect on the keel, rudder and P-bracket. Then antifoul. Finish servicing hydraulic quick connects on cutter Furlex.
No rest for the wicked, not even on Sundays! We wake up with a full agenda, again, and determined to start with the leaking rear window. But as we discuss the plan over breakfast, we decide it would be wiser to wait on that till we are back in the water and with no rain forecast! If it started leaking now that the boat is torqued in the stands, chances are we may re-seal it in an unnatural position. So rear window is officially postponed till the boat in back to its natural state, afloat.
Next priority while here in the yard is to apply the Interprotect coats (waterproofing to seal the hull) and antifouling on the keel bulb. Then in Antigua the boat will have to be blocked so that we have access to the bits that are on blocks now, to scrape and re-paint those sections too. The weather is still dull but warmer, and the Interprotect paint will dry relatively quickly. Which makes us think it will be a quick job in Antigua to go around the hull with 3 coats. Can be done in one day.
First Glen wet’n’dry sands the epoxy coat to give a key for the next layers, then he goes on a shopping tour to buy a cheap measuring device to allow him to mix small qualities of the 2-part paint, multiple times. He comes back with kitchen measuring cups, which work perfectly.
The first coat of grey Interprotect goes on around 11am. The 2nd before lunch, the 3rd after lunch and a 4th coat after afternoon tea! Then the first coat of antifouling (Interlux Micron Extra) just before it gets dark. One more coat needed in the morning. This keel has taken no less than 14 steps to complete so far…. and last step, the 2nd coat of antifoul, will be tomorrow morning. What a marathon! Glad we didn’t have to pay $100 per hour for this job! As for the antifouling paint color…hm, we are not so sure about that. We ordered it online, based on catalogue color “dark blue”. Had no real life reference with regards to blue color scheme. So after the first coat is painted, we would say it’s very dark. Some sort of greenish-blue, a far cry from the gorgeous Hampel blue antifouling we had in the previous 2 years. Let’s see how it looks once the entire hull gets painted in Antigua.
In between coats on Interprotect, Glen finishes the cutter Furlex service, greasing all the connectors. We can clean dust, but can’t clean rust once it gets inside there.
And then some tidying up. Looks like we will need to launch on Wednesday when the water should be up high enough with the southerly wind. So the next 2 working days are going to be frenzied.
Meanwhile, I spend all day tackling video editing, inside in the warm. Another one to publish soon. We are soooo far behind now.
We go to bed hoping that Karen will turn up in the morning to finish the polishing. If not, we will likely miss the Wednesday launch window. It’s been a busy weekend… as per any other day of the week.
