Monday, August 12, 2013

Un hombre contento

With the exception of the surveyor, everyone who looks at Kintala's hull agrees; sand it, clean it, paint it, throw it in the water. That work is well underway and should be done by next week. (There is a lot of sanding, cleaning, and painting to do!) The mast lift was a thing of beauty and all 60+ feet of aluminum and rigging now lies content on saw horses awaiting disassembly. We did find one spreader bracket badly cracked and will try to get that welded before we go. If not, I'm sure the East coast marina can get it done when we get there. The prop will come off in a couple of hours to get overhauled. Most importantly Deb has made the move from the city to the boat and we are working side by side on her list of projects. (Remember, I threw my list away!)

I am a happy man.

At least 15 more days will pass before the truck arrives; my best guess is that finishing the bottom will take another 5. In descending order, and in various places, sanding the bottom is leaving exposed; light blue top coat, darker blue top coat, some grey something, a layer of what everyone claims is VC-17 (that is the brown layer) bondo, epoxy filler, gel coat, and fiberglass; the smoothed patchwork of color a vast improvement over what it looked like in the lift. Of course grinding away the obnoxious smile to a perfectly sound keel joint helped a lot. It is probably a bit insane to work this hard at what is mostly cosmetics. The only real repair is fairing in the keel joint. Other than that we could give the hull a once over with some scotchbright, roll on a couple of layers of magic antifouling paint, toss it in the water. The hull will be just as sound when we pull it in a year or two as it will be with all this work. But it is my boat. I can go a bit crazy making the bottom pretty if I want to.

There actually turned out to be a blister or two. Poking at them released a trace of moisture not even amounting to a drop. The pointy end struck hard maybe 2 mm deep. I’m not convinced the water wasn’t trapped between paint layers but I’ll give the surveyor the benefit of the doubt. And actually (hold tight, I’m going to try and be nice here) admit he might have had the barest hint of a point. I don’t know what the shop rates are at marinas, but if they are just half of what we paid for ye ‘ol jet; Kintala is going to leave Carlyle with a bottom job that would have cost way north of 5 grand in labor alone. I’ll admit, if I had to write a check that big for a couple of layers of bottom paint on a 42 foot boat, it would be an issue.

But the mast is down, work progresses, Deb is here, and even the weather is helping. This has been the coolest, most pleasant midwest summer any of us can remember. Just the thought of trying to do this in the blast furnace of last year could give a person the vapors.

I am a happy man.

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