Well,

This week was not Earth-shattering by any means, but at least the weather has been holding out. So far, we have been blessed with 40-50 degree temps… which is bearable. We’re from New England anyway, so this is like Spring time for us!

This week, we:

1. Continued to varnish the teak. It all looks great. Then again, anything is an improvement on its previous condition.

2. Reinstalled the grab rails. We received our box of hardware from www.boltdepot.com. The website is awesome and very user friendly. All of our hardware arrived, neatly labeled and packaged. Now, I just need to start sanding and varnishing.

3. Put new hardware on the swim ladder and davits. Even though it was all stainless hardware, it rusted. It is 30 years old. We removed the davits and swim ladder, cleaned the surfaces (30 years of gunk build-up–yuck!) installed new hardware, and reinforced it all with large washers. Add a little 4200 for good measure, and voilà!

4. Called Accent Graphics in Annapolis to discuss the design of the custom boat graphics for our new name! They’ve already sent us some proofs to discuss. Yeah!

5. Investigated how to get the old graphics off of the hull. Ugh. After talking with Chris as Accent Graphics, it is in our best interest to have someone else remove the old graphics. We attempted to see what we could do. It didn’t go so well. I am going to try “Plan B” (once I figure out exactly what that is), and if that doesn’t work, then we’ll hire someone in the boatyard to remove the old name.

6. Cut lots of holes in our starboard rudder. Yes. We did. It’s not pretty, but it was necessary. The rudder has a 1.5 sq ft section, on the inboard side that delaminated. We believe water got in, and then froze one winter. So, we had to cut some holes to investigate.

7. Started scraping barnacles. There were a few areas where barnacles grew where there was no bottom paint. We will have to see how the boat sits in the water, and next year if we need to raise the water line, we will. It’s only in a couple of locations, so we don’t know if it just wasn’t painted correctly, or if it actually will sit lower than usual.

8. Replaced the zincs on the shafts and props. Also replaced the Spurs bearings and zincs.



Ok, maybe we did get a lot accomplished!