The work continues
22 November 2013 | Penuwasa Boat Yard, Kudat, Malaysia
Cloudy
Since returning from Kota Kinabalu, we have continued to work on getting Zephyr ready for launch with some progress but no where near our goal. We'd hoped for ten days when we came out but getting the old paint off so we could put on the new took 8 days! It only took 2 when we were in Fiji. OK, so the workers(Tracy and a native) worked harder than these two guys did but 6 extra days is a bit much and we still aren't done. We've ha a man here for the last two days finishing up what the first two guys didn't get done. He works for himself instead of for Tommy so there is more contact between the three of us. He's a hard worker too. of course it doesn't hurt that I've been down there with him the entire time. While he scraped the hull to get the last of the old paint off, I was working on the boot stripe that Tommy's men took off with a grinder, gouging the fiberglass big time. I've had to go in with a better grit of paper on the grinder and try and smooth it out and then go back over it with a orbital sander that we've have on board for years. The grinder runs of 220 volts and the sander is 110 so I have lots of cords running around under the boat. I ground out a bunch of blisters in the fiberglass hull yesterday once I got the boot stripe done. I've ground down a good 150 blisters, far more than we have ever done but we wanted to make sure the hull got done properly this time. I've gone over the blisters with Isopropyl Alcohol to draw out the polyester resin(acid) that made up the liquid in the blister. First I washed then a couple of times with hot water and then the alcohol. I'll do it a couple of times more this afternoon. The sooner they get dried out, the sooner we can fill them and get the bottom painter. With it raining just about every day here, it's hard to keep things dry.
Since we have to wait a day or so for the drying , tomorrow, we may lower Puff(our dinghy) to the ground and fill up the fiberglass hull to see if we can find where it is taking on water when we use it. If water goes in, filling it with water should show where it will come out. Makes sense. Every time we hoist it out of the water, we have to pull the drain to get the water out. Since I'll be using fiberglass to fix the blister, I can use it to coat the dinghy where the leak is if we can find it.
The picture for today was of the Red Chili Beef Enchilada that Tracy made on Thursday afternoon for lunch. I bit of good old comfort food for us. I've added another album of my trip to KK.