Topside Panels, Seatback Tops & Transom Skirt | Final Coat

I was very happy to be applying the final coat of gloss to the topsides, because that meant that repainting the upper hull was complete. Such joy!

I started at the rear of the port topside panel and worked my way forwards and around the bow, painting the upper breast hook en route, and then down the starboard side to the stern.

Lastly I painted the transom skirt, completing the upper hull.

This what it looked like.

And is the transom skirt.

And here is the view from port with the tape pulled.

Lastly this is the transom skirt with the tape pulled.

Looking good!

As usual now, I thinned the paint with 5% Epifanes Easy Flow conditioner.

Now I can think seriously about refitting all the hardware, but I must finish painting the rudder and inside the Dorade boxes.

I do believe the end is in sight...

Companionway Hood & Cabin Roof | Final Coat

I left the seatbacks and the rear cabin wall to cure for a couple of days and wet sanded the overlap onto the cabin roof and the seatback tops.

Using a felt roller sleeve I then applied the fifth and final coat of gloss to the companionway hood and the cabin roof, thinned with 5% Easy Flow conditioner.

This is what it looked like, viewed from starboard.

No bad at all! The felt roller certainly achieves a better finish than the foam.

The rear face of the tabernacle got its final coat at the same time, like this.

Lastly I pulled the tape from the toe rails, revealing the sapele for the first time in months!

Here is the starboard rail.

This feels like real progress, at last.

Rudder | White Gloss & Tape Damage

With time on my hands I started to apply the second coat of white gloss to the rudder.

First I wet sanded the first coat on the whole rudder with a P400 grit. Like this.

I covered the lower pivot eye with Blu Tack to mask it off from paint. Here it is.

Then I applied masking tape for a second coat, as here.

I used a wooden spoon to burnish the edges of the tape, to stop any bleeding.

When painting the cockpit I found that application with a foam roller sleeve improved as it became fully loaded with paint.

This meant initial coverage was patchy, because it was not getting enough paint onto the surface and I was losing the wet edge too easily.

I decided to experiment with a short pile felt roller, which I already had but had not used.

This is them.

Here it is in action with a good brush for tipping out.

That worked well. Here is the rudder with its second coat of white gloss, thinned with %5 Easy Flow conditioner.

No brush marks or patches. Excellent!

While the paint was flowing I gave the interior and the sides of the tabernacle their final coat of gloss.

It looked good, like this.

And finally I pulled the masking tape on the rudder and this happened.

The blue gloss peeled off with the tape. I was surprised because I had used the low tack professional tape that I learned to used when painting the undersides and transom.

Maybe I didn't leave the blue paint long enough to cure. Who knows...

It's not the end of the world and it has happened so many times before that I know how to fix the damage.

Onwards and upwards! 

Cockpit | Refinishing

When the paint in the cockpit had cured I inspected the finish, and was immediately disappointed.

There were small but visible curtains on the rear cabin wall and seatbacks, and I had lost the wet edge in several places. The shiny gloss sheen highlighted it all beautifully!

The cockpit deck wasn't perfect, but it would be mostly covered by the non-slip finish so that didn't matter.

I thought about it for a while and decided to refinish the seatbacks and cabin wall, as I did with the forward deck well. It's tedious in the extreme but I only want to do this once...

So I left the deck as it was and wet sanded the seatbacks and the cabin wall - again.

This is the port seatback being sanded.

When that was done I taped the cabin roof and seatback tops to achieve an overlap across the edges. Like this.

Lastly I applied a fresh coat of paint as carefully as I could, and left it to cure. I used 5% Easy Flow conditioner to thin the paint.

This is the cockpit with tape pulled.

It's not perfect but it is much better, and it is certainly good enough.

So that's the cockpit finished. Hooray!

Rudder | 1st Coat of Blue Gloss

While waiting for the white gloss to cure I gave the rudder its first coat of blue gloss.

Here it is, all masked off with top quality tape.

I masked off the upper pivot eye with Blu Tack so it would not get covered in paint. Here it is.

That will make painting around it much easier.

Then I applied blue gloss thinned with 5% Easy Flow conditioner, using just a brush.

This is what it looked like.

Not too bad for a first coat! I pulled the tape and when dry moved the rudder inside to harden. 

Here it is.

The blue gloss is more opaque than the white and flows much more easily. If and when I build another boat, I will not paint it white!

Forward Deck, Cockpit & Drop Boards | Final Coat (2)

It was now time to paint the next area of the upper hull - the entire cockpit.

First I wet sanded the overlap from the footwell, like this.

Then the (hopefully) final coat was applied to the cockpit deck, seatbacks, rear cabin wall and transom.

It looked like this.

The forward deck well was repainted at the same time. Here it is.

That looked a lot better than the first attempt.

Lastly the companionway drop boards got the final coat on their second side. As here.

We will see how that lot turns out. I will leave it for 48 hours to properly cure.

Forward Deck Well | Refinishing

I left the newly applied paint in the footwell and the forward deck well to cure. It took 48 hours to fully harden.

Then I inspected the results.

The footwell was fine, but all was not well with the forward deck area.

The deck itself had missed patches and brush marks where I had not been careful enough.

Knowing that I would not be happy to leave it like that, I decided to reprepare it and paint it again.

The vertical surfaces were all fine, so I just burnished them with a medium abrasive nylon pad.

Here I am wet sanding the deck itself with a P400 grit.

This was tedious, but I have no intention of doing it again so it has to be right!

Footwell, Forward Deck, Slide & Drop Boards | Final Coat (1)

The time came to start applying the final coat of gloss to the upper hull. I thought about how best to do this and decided to paint it in sections rather than do it all at once, in one frantic dash.

I tackled the footwell and the forward deck well first. First I taped off both areas to ensure that paint flowed over all edges onto the adjacent section of hull. I would then wet sand the overlap to create a seamless transition when the adjacent section was painted.

This is the footwell after its final coat of gloss.

And this is the forward deck well. The deck, sides, forward cabin wall and Dorade boxes have all received their final coat.

While paint was flowing I applied the final (eighth) coat to the companionway slide, like this.

I also applied the final (sixth) coat to the first side of the companionway drop boards. Here they are.

Throughout this process I was conscious that although the temperature was high enough for painting, the relative humidity was still low.

This is what my thermometer/hygrometer was indicating.

Epifanes say that painting in less than 50% relative humidity is not recommended. Well, I can't get it consistently above that, so I just went ahead anyway. I can't wait for weeks for the perfect weather conditions!

I thinned the paint with 5% Epifanes Easy Flow conditioner, and it seemed to flow quite nicely.

We will see what happens...

Trailer | New Bow Roller

With the buoyancy problem solved in the lazarette, attention turned to applying the final coat of paint to the upper hull.

One obstacle remained, however. Spring has sprung, meaning that gardening is high on Mrs Boatbuilder's agenda. That always involves frequent access to the tool shed via my workshop, and disturbance to whatever I am working on.

This is not ideal when painting is underway, so another outstanding task has been completed instead.

When we first put the boat on its trailer it was immediately obvious that the foremost roller was too small.

In this pic you can see that it is too low and way too small.

I talked to the excellent Dave at SBS, who built my trailer. I asked him for a roller with a longer arm to replace the existing one, but he thought that would be a bad idea because being so long it could easily bend.

Instead he suggested making a bigger roller to attach further forward on the drawbar. I sent him a photo of PocketShip on the trailer, and he asked me to measure the height to the bow at the point shown on this pic.

It was 26.5cm.

SBS then made a new and bigger roller for me, with a narrow foot to fit the drawbar on my trailer. It sat on a shelf until now, waiting for the boat to go back outside.

So I installed it today, not being able to do any painting.

This is it.

That's another job ticked off the to do list!

Lazarette | Buoyancy Installation

The first thing I decided to do before starting painting again was to complete the installation of buoyancy in the lazarette.

I started this in February, before we left for the southern hemisphere. I did harbour hopes of completing the work before our departure, but as usual I was being overly optimistic!

I would surmise that this requirement was originally overlooked when building the prototype, because as far as I can remember it isn't mentioned in the manual.

It only appears on drawing #11, which shows slabs of closed cell foam situated underneath the footwell, between the sole and the bottom of the hull.

It calls for 1.38 cubic feet of foam, or 88lb (40kg) of flotation.

I have seen photos of foam sheets jammed unceremoniously in place, and it looks awful!

Other builders have solved the problem in two ways.

Some have extended the footwell sides down to the bottom panels and others have extended the footwell sole horizontally out to the hull side panels, thereby creating an airtight space.

I only realised that something would be necessary after I had completed the hull, so I had left it too late for either option.

I thought about it for months, and eventually decided to strap buoyancy bags underneath the footwell.

This would allow me to remove the buoyancy for cleaning and maintenance, or if extra space was required.

I found that a pair of Crewsaver 18 litre buoyancy bags just about satisfied the requirement, at 36 litres in total.

My plan was to secure the bags in place with webbing of the type used for sailing dinghy toe straps.

Here are the inflated bags.

And here are the fittings to hold them in place.

We require two pairs of strapping bridges, fastened to the footwell sides with 5mm pan head screws.

The straps are made from 25mm braided tape, secured with two pairs of adjustable sliding buckles.

I did a test fit by holding the bridges in place with Blu Tack, just to see if it worked.

Like this.

And here is a close up of the buckle.

That all seemed to work just fine!

So, on our return from Tasmania I very carefully measured out and marked up the position of the strapping bridges, and drilled the pilot holes for the screws.

This is the tool kit required for the job.

Then the fittings were installed and the bags strapped in place.

This is the starboard buoyancy bag, fully installed.

And here again is a buckle in close up.

The final task was to mark off the required length of the straps, like this.

And then cut them both to equal lengths with the hot knife, using an upturned cup as an anvil, like this.

That's it. Job done!

The bags and straps were then removed and stored away to await refitting when painting is complete.

Back In The Workshop!

We returned from our trip to Tasmania a short while ago, so it was time to get back in the workshop and get ready to finish PocketShip.

First I tidied whatever mess I left behind when we left in early February, and put all the tools and paint away.

Then I vacuumed and washed the floor to get rid of accumulated dirt and dust, in readiness for painting.

Lastly I washed all the surfaces to be painted on the boat.

This wasn't a lot of fun, so I finished up with with one of these.

It's good be back. Cheers!

Ballast Bags | Making & Filling

With time on my hands and unable to do much in the way of painting I decided to make the ballast bags.

The build manual states that a minimum of 36kg should be stowed either side of the centreboard case, beneath the removable floorboards. It adds that more might be required for sailing solo or lightly loaded, and suggests that adding 50% more would not be too much.

I decided to go for 100kg in total and see how she sails. I can always add or remove ballast, as required.

I purchased 100kg of lead pellets many moons ago, when I thought I was close to launching. They are offcuts from some manufacturing process; small and ideal for this purpose.

This is what they look like.

At the same time I selected a waterproof material called Phifertex to make the bags, and worked out that I would need fourteen bags - ten holding 8kg and four holding 5kg.

The bags would need to be 13" long and 6 1/2" wide to fill the bilge compartment, so I cut enough 13" squares to make the bags. They were ready to go when needed.

The sewing thread needed to be waterproof and rotproof, and suitable for use on a domestic sewing machine. I found that this type of thread is called V69, and I purchased a spool of the Invincible brand.

The services of Mrs Boatbuilder were now required. I have absolutely no idea how to operate a sewing machine, but she is an ace.

Here she is sewing the sides of the bags together.

And here are some empty bags. You can see that we left a gap in one corner to fill them with lead.

The bags were then filled using a ladle and a funnel to pour the pellets into each bag, like this.

I clamped each filled bag shut until they could all be sealed. Here they are.

Luckily the sewing machinist was available immediately, and here she is sealing the bags.

We took the machine into the workshop rather than move 100kg of lead into the house and back again.

And here is the finished article.

Very neat and tidy.

And miraculously this entire activity was accomplished in a single day, which is completely unheard of in this build!

That was fun.

I stashed the finished bags away in a corner, ready for installation at launch time. Whenever that might be...