Reeving The Centreboard Pendant

As in the last post, I reinstalled the centreboard pendant between painting things and waiting for them to dry.

I made a small loop in the end of a length of garden wire and threaded it into the centreboard case and through the pendant sheave. I taped the pendant to the end of the wire.

Then I made a small hook in the end of a piece of stiff wire and used it to  hook up the loop and pull the garden wire and the pendant through the sheave and out the bottom of the case.

Like this.

Here are the hook and eye.

Then I pushed the pendant through a piece of padding and knotted to it prevent it falling into case.

Now it's ready for the centreboard!

Tabernacle & Companionway Slide | Stripping & Priming

In between other activities and waiting for paint to dry, I stripped and primed the tabernacle and the companionway slide.

Here I am stripping the tabernacle with a scraper, a stainless steel scourer and some paint stripper.

Here I am stripping the companionway slide.

The scourer is very effective.

I washed them both and put them outside to dry, like this.

I sanded both to a P220 grit and applied three coats of primer. Here is the slide.

And here is the tabernacle.

It feels like we are moving slowly, but it is progressing as quickly as it can.

Centreboard & Upper Drop Board | Painting

I started to prepare the centreboard for paint and found that one side had a rough surface.

It was not obvious why this might be, but such mysteries are normal in this build.

I stripped that side again, to make sure no paint or residual stripper remained. Like this.

I washed and dried it. Still rough. So I sanded it and applied two coats of clear resin to seal the surface. Here is the board after two coats.

When cured I sanded both sides through to P220, ready for paint.

Three coats of primer were then applied to the centreboard and the upper drop board. Here is the centreboard.

I rolled it on with a foam roller and tipped out with a high quality synthetic brush. It looked good, and dried very smooth with few brush marks.

The first coat of gloss dried with tiny bubbles, so I asked the vendor what the problem was. He said I was injecting air into the paint with the roller, and to make sure I rolled out the air before applying the paint, and to use a special tipping out brush.

I sanded the board to a a P220 finish. As here.

And then I reapplied the paint. It was a lot better.

Various Epifanes tutorials said to apply at least three coats of gloss, so I went for five and wet sanded with a P400 grit between coats.

I started using the rubber sanding block which I had used before with wet and dry, but soon found that I obtained a better finish without the block, like this.

Here are the centreboard and upper drop board after five coats.

Nice and shiny but I can still see residual brush marks. This was a learning exercise, so I will keep trying.

Here they are inside the house where they will stay for a few days, so I can be sure they are fully cured before deploying them.

The next activity is to reinstall the centreboard. Hopefully for the last time!

New Paint!

Having lost faith in the paint I have been using thus far due to it blistering, I decided to switch to another brand.

A friend's client has built a steam launch and used Epifanes to paint it, and said it was excellent stuff. So I decided to give it a try.

They make three types of boat paint: traditional yacht enamel; one part mono-urethane; and two part polyurethane.

The paint I had been using was traditional yacht enamel, and I didn't like it. As well as blistering it also cures to a soft finish and is easily scratched, and it discolours when wet. Not much good for boat paint, then.

So I didn't select the Epifanes yacht enamel, and shied away from the two part polyurethane because it sounded too hard to use for a beginner like me.

The mono-urethane sounded interesting, though. It is a hybrid between the traditional and the polyurethane paints, being of urethane and alkyd make up. Whatever that means.

There are numerous videos available on how to use it. It is said to offer the hardness and the shine of polyurethane and the ease of application of traditional enamel.

So I purchased some primer. Here it is, with the thinners specified for use with it.

I selected a shade of white close to the old paint. It's called Off White in the Epifanes colour card. This is it, again with the required thinners.

The Epifanes product guide indicates that fewer coats are required than I have been accustomed to make.

This is the page which applies to painting GRP.

It states that one coat of primer is enough, dry sanded to P220.

It also also states that three coats of gloss will suffice, wet sanded with P400 grit.

We will see. I don't really believe it can be that easy.

I intend to paint the centreboard so I can install it soon, and the upper drop board which I will leave outside to see how it fares in the weather.

It is of course eye-wateringly expensive. But what the hell.

Waterline & Boot Top | Levelling & Marking Up (Again...)

It was now time to mark up the waterline and boot top ready for painting, but first I had to make sure the boat was level athwartships as well as fore and aft.

Having done this twice before, I knew exactly what to do! A long spirit level is taped to the keel. like this.

And the same again across the transom.

The port and starboard quarters are then raised with a pair of bottle jacks and the hull is supported  by wooden blocks, like this.

We know the hull is level when the bubble is centred in each spirit level, as it is here.

The hull looked dangerously precarious sat on its stack of wooden blocks, so I decided to transfer support to a pair of heavy duty steel saw horses that I purchased some time ago, with something like this in mind. Here is one of them.

They are are adjustable in height and excellent for this task. Here is the port quarter sitting on its horse.

By great good fortune the hull was still almost level. Here is the bubble centred in the transom spirit level.

A small adjustment was required at the bow to raise it a touch, like this.

As you can see, the bubble in the keel spirit level was now exactly centred.

I had previously worked out that the waterline crosses the forward chine at a point exactly in line with the forward edge of the forward porthole. So I simply marked the spot with the laser level, like this.

It was then straightforward to mark in the waterline, as in this pic.

I knew that the blue boot top stripe should be 38mm at midships, so I marked that on a bit of tape to guide the laser level.

I followed the same line which was still apparent on the stripped substrate to mark up the line between blue and white above the boot top, again using the laser level.

I made small pencil marks along each line and joined them with a rule to obtain fair and flowing lines.

Here they are converging at the bow eye.

The transom was a bit trickier to get right, but here it is fully marked up.

And here is a close up of the transom at the starboard quarter.

I made a slightly better job of this than last time. I suppose some clouds do have a silver lining!

Centreboard | Removal & Stripping Paint (Again...)

It was time to remove the centreboard for the second time in order to repaint it.

Here it is held up out of the case to allow easy handling while the pin is removed. I have removed the pendant at this stage.

I drilled out the resin filler and knocked the pivot pin out with a piece of rod, like this.

As before I had to heat the pin with the hot air gun to free it sufficiently to move.

I found that the pivot hole had closed up very slightly so that the pin was no longer a sliding fit. I'm not sure why but a 10mm drill bit in my old brace was used to carefully ream it out to size.

Here is the brace and bit.

This is the board being stripped.

The paint of course is gloss rather than the primer on the hull, but three applications of stripper still removed it all.

And finally here is the fully stripped board.

I hope I never have to do this again!

Repainting The Hull | Stripping Paint

This is what the underside of the hull looked like at the point when I realised that the white gloss paint I am using is still blistering when exposed to water.

Grey and white primer is all carefully sanded smooth with no 'step' between the colours, all ready for gloss.

Sadly it is not to be. It's all got to come off, for the second time.

The test pieces set outside some weeks ago showed signs of blistering again when they got wet, and I simply cannot take the chance that the same thing will happen again if I repaint the boat using the same make of paint.

So I started to remove all the newly applied primer, but this time I used paint stripper rather than use the sander.

This is because I find it impossible not to sand through the fibreglass sheathing when sanding, through to bare ply. Whereas careful scraping with paint stripper does not damage the substrate at all.

This is the stripping kit. A sharp Bahco scraper does the job very effectively, with no scratches or tram lines. And a stainless steel scouring pad is very good for places which can't be scraped, such as curved surfaces.

An here once again is the eco-friendly paint stripper which washes off with water.

It takes three applications of stripper to completely remove the paint. I usually use the scourer on the final coat.

This is the starboard hull after stripping.

You can see that the two-part polyurethane primer that I applied to the faired keel fillets is not affected by the stripper.

I worked downwards. This is the port keel and fillet after stripping.

And here is the port side of the bottom fully stripped.

I left the transom masked off to avoid staining what will be a revarnished surface, like this.

Here the transom has been partly stripped.

And finally here is the fully stripped transom.

Lastly I washed and scrubbed the hull to remove any traces of stripper, and sanded it smooth with a P220 grit.

All  ready for marking up. Again!