Unveiled

Saturday the tarp and framework came off.

And then it rained. Heavily.

The good news is that my decks are much cleaner now. And there were no apparent leaks. The bad news is that I had left two of the opening ports open and the deck drains are not connected yet. I had some water issues inside but it wasn't a major problem. Its a boat and I built some resistance to water into the building process.

After the tarp came off I started to prep the toerails for varnish. Last fall they got a sealer coat but the varnish never went off and I wound up wiping a lot of it off with solvent. Before I could varnish though, I realized that I needed to trim the ends a bit.



For the time being, I am keeping the ends simple. I still think about a proper taffrail but I just don't have time now. A taffrail won't be a simple half day project. To maintain some symmetry I just reversed the angle between the deck and the transom.



At the bow, I needed to cut back the toerail a bit to mount the skene chocks.



At one point I was thinking of putting the skenes up on blocks but the anchor roller was getting in the way so I cut the toerail back with enough room to mount the skene chocks right on the deck. Sometime in the future I am going to have to revisit the chock installation. I might even do it before launch. I need to do something to improve the look.



Some of the photos are washed out. The nonskid is still a light beige even though it all looks white in some of the photos.

When I ordered the skene chocks I thought I was ordering two. Instead I was ordering two pair. I was toying with the idea of using the second pair further aft down the deck for spring lines.



At the stern, the original installation had two cleats spaced about a third in on each side of the poop deck with chocks to guide the lines.

Something like this:



I got looking at it though and I started thinking I should just move the cleats outboard and eliminate the chocks like this:



I will of course put the cleats on blocks and raise them up to the height of the toerail.

Anyway, as the sun started to set on Saturday I went over the whole toerail and gave it a good sanding. Six months outdoors and what's left of the sealer coat had raised the grain quite a bit.

And that's when it rained.

The next morning I wiped down the toerails with acetone, masked them off with tape and gave them a coat of varnish thinned about 50%.

I had a bunch of things planned but Hamilton Marine really let me down. I ordered a bunch of odds and ends Monday and got a quick acknowledgement but never got a shipping notification. There was nothing here waiting for me so I had to make some new boat plans. They are usually pretty good. I am not sure what happened this time.

I got the second deck drain permanently installed. I also did some work on the shelf that holds the waterlift muffler.

The wind was really blowing hard all day. So hard that the varnish was setting up quickly. I decided to push it a bit, since it was a sealer coat and applied a second coat of varnish thinned maybe 25%. That makes two coats of varnish so now I feel better about the toerails being protected under the sun all week. It was a bit of a struggle keeping the other boat owners around me from spraying me down with water or covering my freshly varnished toerails with dust. Working in a public boat yard sucks sometimes.

I also got two holes drilled in the counter for thru-hulls and a pilot hole for the engine exhaust fitting. I didn't have the right sized hole saw to finish the hole for the exhaust. I didn't have the necessary hardware for the exhaust fitting either so I decided not to open a new tube of 4200 for the thru-hulls until I was ready to put all three fittings in.



I was pleasantly surprised to see a relatively decent core from the new holes. Defintely not too thin back there.



Next week, will be finalizing the engine, getting it ready to start, and dragging my mast around so I can get started on the rigging. Hopefully, Hamilton Marine will come through for me.

Great. I am looking out my window right now and can see dark storm clouds. I sure hope my varnish set up. At least my decks will stay clean.