Now this sure is interesting

It's a hole.

A hole dug in the dirt. Well dug till I hit big rocks. Rocks too big to get out with a spade.

And in case you missed the first two pictures here's a third to complete the 'Tour d'Hole'  :-)

It's not deep 'nuff to bury any bodies in so everyone who visits the boat shed is safe! :-)  This is the pocket the end of the Gin Pole will sit in. Ideally I guess 3 or 4 feet down would have been best but I hit some pretty hard stuff about 24" down and couldn't get any further with just a spade & crow bar. It'll have to do.

Got side tracked this afternoon with insurance issues (rate creep) so I'll get to rigging the pole tomorrow.

Standby....

Pics as promised

So here's the pics as promised.

Looking forward. No I didn't miss the back of the keel. I still have some work to do there and that'll get done once it's flipped.

Stbd side looking aft and across the keel. I approximated the water line on the bow. I checked yesterday and the boat is way off level. Probably settled from the 3 yrs it's been sitting there on blocks plus my hulk climbing around on it for years. I'll mark the waterline after the boat is flipped and leveled.

Stbd side again looking forward.

Port side looking forward.

It took me two days to get the Corotech Polyamide Epoxy Primer V150 on the hull. Very nice stuff but wow the fumes. Nasty stuff. Respirators a must with this product. All I could get was one coat out of the 2 gallon kit. I'm assuming a lot of the catalyst is lost to atmosphere when it cures. I rolled on the anti-fouling within the overcoating window so there should be a really good bond between the two layers. Sure much nicer than have to sand the hull again and paint it laying on my back getting splattered with nasty black stuff.

That's it. Clearing stuff out of the way so I can start rigging the hull to get flipped.

Standby.....

That's it, I'm done!

I'm done with primer & bottom coat. There's nothing left I have to do to the boat before I flip it. Probably a couple of weeks till that happens. Can you contain your excitement? :-)

Pics later maybe. I'm toasted!

Standby...

Here we go again!

Another coat of primer going on the keel & bottom!

Spent the morning finishing up the sanding on the keel & bottom panels. Decided to try to get some paint on it this afternoon. This time it's an industrial grade epoxy primer that's used for underwater structures. My buddy Peter used it on his boat and swears by it. I managed to weasel myself some from the friendly Benjamin Moore dealer in Ottawa!  :-)  Thanks Serge!

When they say wear a respirator with vapor canisters on it they mean it! Whatever is in this stuff is STRONG! I mixed it outside which was fine. Carried the bucket into the shed to dump it in the paint tray and in less than 10 seconds I was feeling woozie! I dumped it in the tray and ran for fresh air! I couldn't imagine having to use this stuff in an enclosed space without a self contained air supply.

I managed to get two litres on the boat. It's tough rolling it on. The short nap roller lasted all of 30 seconds before it fell apart, again something strong in this stuff just destroyed the roller sleeve. Switched to a longer nap roller sleeve and that was much better. This stuff will stay in the pot for up to 4 hrs at 70 degs. It was 80 in the shed so I knew I had to hustle but oh boy does it stiffen up when it gets to a thin film. I'd say it was way past tacky inside of 30 seconds after being rolled out. If you miss an area you can't go back over it. Just have to wait for a couple of hours to recoat.

Managed to burn myself out after just a half hour of painting this stuff. On top of sanding all morning I was running up and down the step ladder. I'm out of roller sleeves anyways so it looks like it's Canadian Tire for me tomorrow!

Standby.....

Best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” - Robert Burns

Ayup! Well long story short. I was planning on giving the keel & bottom panels a quick light sanding yesterday to get it ready to put the anti-fouling paint on it. Now, the keel and bottom wasn't really faired to the quality of the side panels because once they're covered in black anti-fouling paint and in the water no one will see them. As soon as I put the small sanding block to the bottom I immediately cut right through the primer onto the epoxy coating underneath! Doh!

So what to do. Say 'screw it' and just anti-foul over it or put more primer on? Hmmmm? My buddy Peter had pretty good luck with an epoxy primer he got from Benjamin Moore so I called the store in Ottawa. They don't sell that exact kind Peter used but had a new brand. So off I went to Ottawa to buy some more expensive paint! *Sigh*

In order to get a new coat of primer on the boat the old layer has to be sanded (Keyed) so the new primer can bond to it better. I started that this morning, doing it all by hand so I didn't burn too many holes through the primer. It takes the fine touch of the hand to keep it from cutting too deep.

It goes pretty quickly. The primer is soft. Not squishy soft but soft like chalk sort of. Once you get the orange peel sanded off you end up with a nice smooth hard surface. It's nasty stuff to sand though. Produces a very fine dark grey dust that goes absolutely everywhere!

So originally the plan was to just do the keel & bottom down to the water line for the re-coat. I was planning on doing the sides later once the boat is upright and most of the work is done. I figured it'll get a few bumps, bruises, bangs & nicks along the way so finish fairing and painting would be near the last thing done on the boat. Well silly me just has to try out his fancy schmancy sanding tools (Flexicats) on the side panels.

It becomes evident pretty quick that there's still work to be done on the sides. The blue spots are highs and I've circled the lows in pencil. The low spots will have to get an extra coat of primer before another go round of sanding & primer. These lows are incredibly shallow. You can't feel them except for the slight orange peel in the primer that's left. So that's where today's plan sort of went off the track. I'll get back to the keel tomorrow then put another coat of primer on it. I'll be able to overcoat this primer with the anti-fouling a lot easier. It has a much greater window for overcoat than the other stuff did.

Who knows, in a 100,000 years some alien archaeologist may find this image on a trashed hard drive of a computer server and wonder: "What the f*ck is that?"  :-)

So just when I thought I was done sanding I'm back to sanding. I'm sorry, believe me no one wants to see this tub flipped over more than me.

Standby........