Phew......
Whole boat was scraped by Saturday evening....
Retired for a quiet (very) night at the local Travelodge as per SWMBO's demands.... slept like a baby!
Sunday, and back at the boat by 08h30..... pootled around and did a few bits and bobs until the reasonable hour of 10h00 before starting to sand.... (the boat yard is below a bick block of waterside apartments - and it was Sunday morning after all!)
So, the sanding began..... I had bought a new sander for the job.... it was cheaper to buy a new one than to get the service bits (new velcro disc) for the old one.... ridiculous...
By 15h00, I had sanded the whole boat..... really looking good..... very very pleased with myself.... a very smooth finish across the whole bottom....
So, a total of 5 days of scraping and sanding....... bloody hard work.... glad It doesn't need doing every year!!!!!!!
I then power washed the thing clean, and went to shower while it dried.... I was somewhat dirty.... in fact, when I got to the shower block, I burst out laughing at myself when I looked in the mirror..... a perfect white area around my mouth from the dust mask, and a pair of white spectacles from the safety glasses.....and every where else completely 'smurf' blue..... I did look remarkably like a panda....
After a much needed shower I went back to see that the boat wasn't going to dry in time for any paint, so decided to abandon ship for the day....
All the while this had been going on, SWMBO had been attacking the prop and prop shaft with a brass wire brush and wet and dry sandpaper... it is now gleaming..... she then set to removing the silver coach line set in a small recess along the topsides.... initial efforts were with an hairdryer... didn't work, so then WD40 and a household pan cleaner did the trick..... by the time I had finished sanding she had removed pretty much all of one side.... sounds painfully slow, which it was....
Other success was, rubber ball related.... during last summer M dropped a small rubber ball down one of the cockpit drains and it had wedged in the pipe.... I was planning to remove the pipe to get the ball out, but in a burst of inspiration, while I had the pressure washer out, I stuck it into the through hull from below...... whoosh..... the ball shot out, flew 20' into the air... and the drain was clear!
I also nipped in to the chandlers on the way in Saturday morning and bought a tin of antifoul primer..... I decided that getting the hull so fair, and then risking the antifoul not binding would be daft, so for the sake of £40, am going to do it properly....
Next challenges are to finish removing the silver sticker, to clean the topsides, to degrease/de-polish the topsides, to apply the poliglow, to prime and then antifoul, to paint the stern properly, to paint the coach line in the same colour as the stern.... I also need to work out what order to do all these in...
Finally, I need to service the seacocks, replace one of them, replace the anodes and then launch her!
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