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the dream of dawn

Day Ten: Back In Black

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by
toddster
, 10-22-2018 at 04:39 PM (1373 Views)
Wow, barely more than a week and already Arcturus is getting a little antsy about being out of the water so long... gonna be a long winter. Especially when he sees me taking Lil' Böote out to play.

I spent a week fixing little dings and details and slathered on three coats of West Marine CPP. Left a quart or two for touch-up details before launch in the spring. Most of the days elapsed were due to playing musical chairs with the stands and waiting for the paint under each pair of pads to dry. Ludicrously nice weather continues.

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The freshly black rudder, baking in the unseasonal sun, developed a number of large blisters! I cut them open and they appear to go all the way to the upper layer of skin. No fluid came out. Probably water vapor trying to escape - it got in but it can't get out? Last time, the rudder dried out in the garage for several months, before I painted it. I don't want to dismount it yet, because I want to be sure of clearances when I install the wind vane. BTW, I can wiggle the rudder a mm or two in the tube. Seems loose? I wasn't able to get grease to go down from the top fitting last spring...

And... This seems like the punch line to a bad joke, but I raised the water line a couple of inches. Due to the port list and cruising gear, the boot stripe always had lots of scum growing on it. And in fact, there were several blisters within the stripe that I had to fix. I guess I really should have extended the barrier coat all the way to the top of the boot stripe, then repainted it. Maybe next time. If time and pocket change seem auspicious in the spring, maybe I'll get a quart of red CPP and restore the stripe to its full width in bottom paint.

So counting the crane and the paint, I'm up to about $250 on this haul-out. The boat yards in PDX wanted more than $1200 just for this much progress, and I'm sure that would not have included the detail work I've been doing. Lot's more to do still!

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  1. Christian Williams's Avatar
    Just catching up and--say, what's going on here? Steps on the mast, wind vane on the stern?

    Something you're not telling us about cruising plans?

    And by the way, as you already know, many folks wrap the rudder with something reflective, as apparently they don't do well in the sun when drying out.
  2. toddster's Avatar
    Maybe... I've been contemplating retirement and extended low-budget cruising. The hypothetical use-case is Alaska to Baja. It's a little hard to make a big life decision, but meanwhile I'm doing some "prepping" when the opportunity presents itself. I've accumulated quite a collection of gear that represents other peoples cast-off and recycled dreams. Considering that it may be several years (if ever?) before the boat is back at the workshop again, I'm trying to do as much of the work I'd conceivably ever want to do that requires bottom-out and mast-down access. (Subject to reasonable budget, that is...) E.g. I don't really need the wind vane or the scuba compressor mounted all the time in the local marina, but I'd like to have the hardware and reinforcements in place so that I could simply bolt them on when they're needed.

    (Last winter, the wind vane was disassembled, de-salted, repaired, and painted. Now it's time to get it off the workbench.)