Intermission..

Spring sun and white hull 

Some more pics from the project, enjoy.. These pictures with the sunshine were taken last Saturday before I started to work. Solid five hours of sanding and some backache later nearly all of the paint has gone.

More progress

Adding it up, I have now gathered about 30 liters of scrapings and sanding dust (yes, I even collect that too).

Not much left here 

The sides and lower surfaces of the bottom lists are by far the most difficult areas to clean. I can pretty much get nearly all of the paint off by applying innovative sanding techniques with the random orbital sander. The rest come off with a drill and some abrasive add-on's.

Some work to be done

All the black is now gone

Surpricingly the stickiest paint seems to on the area right under the blue stripe. This puzzles me since the surface is nice and vertical and there is not much curvature on it. But still the paint seems to stick like nothing before.

The area where the keel meets the bottom is a pain in the neck to get clean. The surface curves so that you really cant get to it with a scraper or a sander. The only way to get it clean is to use a two sizes of "sanding cylinders" with a drill. First you use a smaller one and get most of the stuff away from the bottom of the curve, then take the larger one and finish the area. If you try to get it all with the larger one you end up sanding everything but the bottom of the curve.

These have gone too

I still need to get rid of the blue stripe. I will raise it about 3 centimeters and also raise the antifouling a little. In between there will be a nice clean white stripe and the raised blue line will be black.

Generator powering the lights, sander and charging batteries for cordless drill 

My trusted small genset powering all the hardware I had with me. I know that the white extension cord is not approved for outdoor use but as it was -13 Celsius out there there was no real threat of the snow suddenly turning into water.

Cold, dark and working on the boat 

My home away from home. This is the place where I think I have spent about 50 or so hours so far. There's enough snow on the sides to give shelter form the winds so I wont freeze totally.

Epoxy and powdered glassfibre

Epoxy for the  small fixes 

Today I decided to think ahead and get some of my favorite stuff; SP-106 epoxy. This time I opted for the fast hardener since I will be doing the work in less than optimal surroundings. This meaning that the I will try to get as much filling done as soon as possible in low temperatures. I really want the bottom to be reasy for barrier coating as soon as spring and the temperature kicks in, so I think that I need to get creative and build somekind of shelter witha a heat source for the areas where there's a need to do larger fills. Anyway there' s still time since it's still minus degrees for a long time.

I have already used this stuff in my other boat, which is a 17 footer that is undergoing a major renovation (stringers, transom, etc). The SP is easy to use and so far I have been more than happy with the stuff.

The plan is simple, grind out all bad stuff and small cracks and fill them with a paste made of powdered glassfibre, fillite- microballoons and silica- ash to stop the mix dripping before it sets.

I need a snowplough, really..

There was a snowstorm last night and I was anxious to get to the boat to check the situation. High winds and light snow meant that the boat covers were clean but the ground was not. I was the first one in the harbor and tried to get to the boat only to find that I could not. Got nearly stuck in the 30-40 cm of fresh snow. If you closely you can see that a Skoda can actually make a bow wave and it was trying to get on top of it, as in trying to get planing...

Almost there

Had a chance to put six solid hours of work on the bottom and it shows. I got quite a lot scraped and sanded as can be seen from the pic below. Both sides are pretty much done and only those hard to reach places remaining.

Aft to bow

 IT is slightly difficult to scrape the sides around waterline since the position that you need to get to is difficult. The reason is quite simple; snow. As you can see there is about a solid meter of snow on both sides of the boat, bit more on the SB side since there is another boat that sheds it's snow to the same pile.

Old propeller log and grounding plate 

Visible here is the old propeller log (which is not working). Right behind it the black lump is the grounding plate for electrics. I'm thinking of getting rid of the log since it has no use and only creates drag. I'm still torn if I will take the whole log of and patch the bottom, or only take the propeller away... May be the first alternative, if I have enough time.

Old patch job

So far I have found four patch jobs from the boat, which is actually not that much given the boat's age and the fact that the engines have been changed. I'm pretty sure that the patches slightly aft from amidships are old raw water intakes for the old engines (visible here on the upper left corner of the image). I sanded the patches and found that they have been done quite nicely, not perfect but they will hold. They had been painted with a primer. Curiously enough at few places the fiberglass extended over the old ablative paint from the edges, well not any more it's all dust in the wind now...

Not much left 

Not much scraping left anymore, only few square meters to go. In hours I guess that the scraping will take two hours (plus sanding) and then the bottom would be bare. Of course there's still a lot to do but it will be easy and less messy.

Tools of the trade 

These are the basic tools used in this job. A proper scraper with carbide blades (Bahco Ergo) and random orbital sander (Bosch PEX 270 AE). Most of all proper sanding discs. I will never ever sand anything with old sanding discs anymore. I have found that Mirka's Abranet sanding mesh material is supreme to anything else. It will outlast anything and also outperform anything else I have ever tried, so be advised. 

Grind by night

Once again had a chance to sand the bottom for about an hour or so. This time I started from he SB side and tackled the area around props. All went smoothly and I got about two squaremeters sanded before it was time to head back home.

The picture is horrid but you can see two things, first of all it was dark and secondly...PROGRESS!

It will surely take many trips to the boat and a major load of elbow grease but I'm getting there. Can't wait for the summer and a chance make wakes once again, meanwhile just look at the pic below.

Basic stuff

If someone else is planning to do this kind of work over the winter, please be adviced...

When the temperature goes over the freezingpoint and there has been a longer period of subzero temperatures the boat effectively gathers moisture on the outside of its hull since it is still colder than the surroundings, this is especially true if there is a high humidity level. I know all this but did not think it through...

Yesterday evening I had already set up my lights and generator up and running and I started to sand the bottom only to find it to be an exercise in futility. The moisture made it impossible, the sanding disc clogged up in seconds and it was a mess. If only the weather would stay in subzero temperatures, my life would be easier.

Still scraping and sanding

I have lost count on the number of times I have been to the boat and done the scraping thing, the problem is that it is hard to find the time when you would have more than an hour to spare. So instead, It's progress in baby steps.

Some progress, so far. The bow section on both sides is pretty much clean already. But since this is a 34 footer there's a lot more boat left. The pic below shows my generator, it is a handsome unit and should be because it cost about 45 euros. So it is a two- stroke, El cheapo machine but it delivers enough electricity for my Bosch sander, so it's all good..

If you happen to buy this generator and experience the same blackout that I had (engine runs great but no power out), here's how you fix it:

- one carefully aimed kick to the lower part of the front panel, not hard but still a sound kick.

The volt meter came back to life and everything worked. I just love technology that is this simple to fix :-)