Life on the Hard

There is a shared sense of misery in the yard among the sailors laboring away all day while living 20 feet off the ground. Hope and anticipation float through the air like dust from a sanding project, getting caught in your eye every now and then, causing you to pause. It’s a strange purgatory filled with hard work and an unknown end. There is constant noise during daylight hours of heavy machinery: the lift rolling by with yet another boat; forklifts beeping as they backup and scoot around; sanders running on every other hull; and the sharp wail of grinding and cutting stainless steel. Imagine living in a tree house in the middle of a construction site. While living on the hard, we cannot use the boat heads, sinks, or built-in refrigerator. We use the forward cabin to sleep and can sit in part of the salon that is not covered with project supplies and tools. We climb up and down the ladder dozens of times a day – to cook, eat, use the bathroom, brush teeth, run errands, do laundry, and carry tools and supplies up and down as we shift project focus from the hull to the deck to below deck.

Since our return from the South Island we have worked non-stop for 19 days straight. I asked a friend in the yard how his boat work was coming along. He answered “slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly making progress.” Same for us. Despite weather delays, receiving a shipment of expired paint, and a hundred other small setbacks, we are making progress!

The hull is where we’ve seen a lot of solid progress. We completed the hull sanding which was the final step before applying new epoxy barrier coat. We wiped down the hull with alcohol and put up a tape line. 5 coats and 2 days later, the barrier coat was complete! We’re really happy with how it turned out and expect to have good protection from water intrusion for many years. Then the hull got another full round of sanding before we applied Copper Coat. We’re excited to use this non-ablative antifoul paint for the first time. When applied and working correctly it can provide protection from marine growth for up to 10 years! Our previous ablative antifoul paint provided 1-2 years of protection. Ablative antifoul needs to be reapplied so frequently because it is designed to slough off into the water when marine life grows on it. We’re really excited to give Copper Coat a try so we can paint less often and so we’re not leaving behind a toxic trail of antifoul paint everywhere we go. Applying Copper Coat is nothing short of a painting marathon. Each coat needs to be applied while the previous coat is still tacky. It took 5 of us working 8 hours straight to apply 1 initial coat of resin without copper and then 5 coats of Copper Coat. As a team we took one 10 minute break early in the morning when the weather was cooler and the paint was slower to dry. Aside from that we just kept stirring and rolling. Another fun part about Copper Coat application is that the paint needs to be stirred regularly so the copper does not settle down on the bottom of the bucket. The final step for Copper Coat is burnishing which will happen just before we go back in the water. For now, our hull is looking shiny and smooth which to us translates to fast! Also under the boat, we cleaned off the propellor and shaft and applied PropSpeed. It’s essentially an antifoul specific to propellors and other high movement metal components.

The rudder work was also a large project in its own right. We started with sanding the rudder down to fiberglass to dry out and refill any blisters, similar to the hull. Next up was resealing/reinforcing the area where the rudder shaft enters the rudder. This required drilling out existing material to get a nice clean chamfer, then filling it with Sika 291 and West Systems G-Flex epoxy. It also needed all the sanding, barrier coat painting, and Copper Coat painting, as described above. The added fun was that because it was hanging, it would twirl around with any pressure applied to it by a sander, paint roller, or strong breeze. Putting the rudder back in will be one of the last things we do before going back in the water.

We hired out a handful of projects and those are starting to come back to us. Our new bimini with one clear side panel on each side is now installed. What a difference! The stitching is excellent and there are thoughtful reinforcements for high wear areas. We’ve always been well protected under the hard dodger but the new clear sides should really help with the keeping the helm more protected from rain and waves. We also took delivery of our updated cockpit and interior cushions. We sat on hard wooden seats for about a week waiting for these after our return from the South Island, and we’re loving them! The foam in the cushions we had made in Mexico was wearing thin but the covers were still in great shape. This foam replacement is quite an upgrade that allows us to keep the skillfully stitched covers from Mexico. We also finally had the navigation station seat cushions replaced. We somehow forgot about the nav station seat in Mexico when we had all the others done. We used some of the old foam to refresh our bean bag chair so we no longer have to worry about a tear spilling tiny foam beans all over the ocean. We hired someone to make a new freezer lid for us of marine plywood since the old one was splintered and warped. Once the freezer lid was cut we proceeded with epoxy primer and then final top coat painting. We also had some new boat shirts made out of quick-dry material. You’ll see them modeled at some point.

On the deck, we removed our hatches and handed them off to a professional to replace the glass, latches, hinges, and seals. You may recall us having water leak around hatches in the past during heavy rainfall or high seas crashing over the deck. While waiting for our hatches to be rebuilt, the holes in the deck were covered with a wide high quality waterproof tape. Another small deck project was to relocate the side board where we secure scuba tanks and diesel jerry cans from port to starboard. We decided to move this weight over to starboard to help better balance the boat.

Another important deck project was resealing the hydrovane bolts. You may recall our water intrusion issue during our passage from Tonga to New Zealand – we certainly do! We ultimately discovered the problem was that the bolts securing the hydrovane to the stern swim step were working themselves loose and each wave smacking against the hydrovane rudder was likely making the holes slightly larger. The short term solution was to torque the bolts when possible and keep an eye on the bilge pump. The long term solution that we tackled was to remove the bolts here in the yard, clean the components, add chamfers, and use a combination of Sika 291 and butyl tape to reseal the bolt holes. It took a while to get things apart given the decade or more of salt build-up on the hydrovane base, but eventually we got there. We don’t have a great way to check our new seals while on the hard but we’ll definitely keep a close watch on it once we get back out sailing.

We tackled another resealing job in the cockpit. This project involved removing the deckplate above the rudder post to reseal it. This area of the cockpit is often inundated with water, either salt water from big waves or fresh water from showers and rinsing dive gear. When Mark popped off the metal deck plate, it was clear that the old sealant was almost completely worn through. A good cleaning and application of Sika 291 should keep the rudder post and lazarette below the cockpit much more dry in coming years.

Below deck one of the biggest projects has been sanding damaged interior teak for refinishing. Damage was mainly due to water intrusion or sun bleaching. Sanding everything down took a lot of time but finally came to close. Then we moved on to finishing the wood with Clean Armor 716. It’s a unique wood finisher that cures after ~2 minutes of exposure to UV light. We can adjust the level of shine in the finish by adding talc powder to the liquid before applying it. The more talc, the more matte the finish. It is a massive timesaver compared to traditional wood finishing which requires multiple coats with hours or days required to cure between coats. To prevent curing while applying it we covered our windows with blankets, sheets, foam pads, anything we could find to block out the light. We have a small UV light we used for curing, as well as taking off the extra window coverings to let the natural UV light shine in. For finishing the areas around the companionway we had to wait until after sunset because we had no good way of blocking out the UV from that area during the day. One night we tackled that area and worked from around 8pm to midnight. Overall we’re happy with the results and we’ve been learning along the way about best methods for applying the finish and for curing it. We also replaced the screens in the teak frames for the hatches. In order to sand the screen frames, we had to remove the old screens. Once the teak was finished with Clean Armor 716 we installed new screens and spline. We’ll carry some extra screen and spline in case any of our screens are damaged in the future.

We’re wrapping up our list of preventative medical exams here. We both went to the dermatologist who specializes in skin cancer for full body skin checks. We got checked back in Seattle and figured that after nearly 2 years in the tropics and southern hemisphere it was time for another check. Good news, nothing to worry about for either one of us. We’ll keep covering up and wearing sunscreen. We’re also getting the last few travel-related vaccines and medications needed for our upcoming planned cruising grounds.

In early March we were lucky to have Mark’s cousins visit us which gave us a great excuse to stop work and enjoy Northland with them. We explored some new spots and took them to some of our favorite places in Whangarei, and also snuck in a weekend with them in Auckland. We visited yet another glow worm cave, this time near Waipu. It was a fantastic tour and we were even allowed to take pictures as long as we didn’t use the flash. Mark brought our small UV light too and we were able to get some really cool pictures while enjoying the magical beauty of these little insects. We took a short hike through Waipu Gorge to Piroa Falls for a refreshing dip, strolled along the beach at Waipu Cove, walked through A.H. Reed Park to see the massive old kauri trees, and stopped by Whangarei Falls. On rainy days we visited the museums along the Whangarei waterfront. The favorite was Clapham’s National Clock Museum with its collection of over 1,700 clocks and timepieces! In Auckland we spent a day on Waiheke Island visiting two wineries. We also caught the Pasifika Festival for an afternoon of song and dance performances and island food. It was a lot of fun to visit the stages and booths for islands we’ve visited in the past year and those for the islands we have in our cruising plan for this year. We had a blast with the cousins and it was very restorative to step away from the boat yard for a few days. We look forward to the next time they meet up with us on our adventure.

Next Stop: Still in the yard…