Gone is the record breaking heat of summer here. Along with the sun overhead cooking away with very little wind it almost feels like there could be frost on deck.
In reality it's a few degrees cooler with not as much humidity and best of all the wind is back.
My summer job of redoing Wild Birds deck is over. All the hardware is back in its place sitting on top of a new deck surface.
We put in these little water ways to break up the expanse of the non skid.
Rolling.... Rolling...
Every morning we get these flying termites if a rain squall passes over. They are all over the deck. What a pain in the....
Here's the deck after I have applied the sand on top of the epoxy resin that I rolled out. All the deck edges had to be carefully masked off as Tim And Gayle wanted a two tone colored deck. When applying the epoxy resin it was about 100 degrees in the shade with the deck so hot I could not go barefoot. I can walk on asphalt barefoot but man was it hot. I did not have time to get pictures of this process.
With the heat and the on going threat of a rain squall I had to get the deck done all at one time. If it rained then it would take days to get things dry again. Every time it did rain when I was masking the masking tape would have to be dried off and in places redone. I don't have to worry about this kind of stuff on Hogfish Maximus because we are not Yachty.
Here's Rachel scooping up the used sand to reuse on our next project next year rebuilding our racing trimaran that I salvaged. I am always thinking ahead for future projects.
When rolling on the epoxy the one thing that I did not think of was that when the epoxy hit that clear grounded fiberglass deck all would be clear. I could not see or tell how thick the resin was. So what happened was I got small imperfections in the sand as ridges and small rises. This is the deck all swept off now. The little white rectangle is a spot I missed and could not see.
Now I have rolled on one coat of Awlgrip Cream paint. It took 3/4 gallon to do a coat. I rolled on three coats over several days when it was not raining.
Drilling out for the Genoa sheet track. All those holes going into a perfectly sealed deck. Oh well.
The cockpit was so nice this summer without this pedestal.
New hatch liner in the head where a deck prisim used to be.
Yea that's as far as I could get this liner down to get at the Genoa track bolts. My left arm is hurting from twisting to get in there. Rachel was on deck to help so we just yelled back and forth at each other.
I see you way back in there.
Not so bad in the aft head.
Before picture with lots of needless deck hardware.
The old bow.
New bow with a totally rebuilt under the winch deck and pad.
Old deck
New deck with head hatch. European boats don't have enough hatches for ventilation in the tropics.
This will take about a week or so. Then I will be racing the whole winter on TAZ as crew.
As I'am soon to be unemployed for the winter I will have more time to blog and get some more skiff and sailboat designs out there.
Tim and Gayle arrive next week to re step the mast and put her back in the water for a winters sailing about the Caribbean waters.
Here's what the past months have looked like in this project.
After the deck was faired off I primed all the deck edges with a short nappy roller using Awlgrip 545 white primer. I did three coats going around and around all at once. Took most of a day.
Lots of edges plus the cabin sides, mast support and around the hatches and gutters.
Here I faired in the fuel fill so it would not be such a toe grabber.
Stern area now with nothing on it. With WBs draft it's about 14' off the ground. Most people would not climb up the ladder to say hi. To scared. Don't blame them.
One coat looking aft.
Now all three coats on with no hardware on yet. We still had this cover up because it was so calm. Once the deck was painted off it came as when it blows here it shakes that cover and my nerves to hell. Glad it's over. This deck tough feels great when wet or dry.
Amazing how many things you have to take off to do a job like this.
I used butel tape to seal off the steering pedestal. This was a lot cleaner than regular caulking.
Tims installing a second roller furler behind the bow Genoa. I installed this bulkhead to secure it to the bow. I ground away all the old paint and when done I tilted the grinder on its side and ground many little grooves in the hull side. I did this so when the epoxy resin and cloth go over all this they will act like treads to stop the upward movement. Also the turnbuckle has no slack so the whole deck would have to come loose to move this.
Today..... Nice and clean
Because they don't need them over there!!!
I took a total of 640 hours to do this job.
Next job is to fix this hole. It's in a Mumm 36 that was dropped by a crane when moving. It's a reasonably clean hole to fix. I will post its rehabilitation after I'am done in a few weeks.
TAZ is a Riechel Pugh 37' all carbon sloop. The owner Bernie Evan Wong is a very dedicated local racing sailor. Last week we raced locally and came in 2nd after corrected time in 6 first place finishes.
We are to race the Grenada regatta, the Caribbean 600 then over to St. Martin for the Heineken regatta, then back over for Antigua sailing week plus all the little ones in between. I will also do the Antigua Classic regatta and if we can with Wild Bird the Beqia Easter regatta. I think I will log about 3,000 plus miles here this winter sailing to and fro. My kind of winter. Great sailing, people,weather, seas and of course the Party's!!!!!
Talk soon
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