Poke a little, grind a bunch.
14 May 2016 | Power Boats yard, Trinidad
Bill/ a clear night
We were back on the ground early this morning to take advantage of the cool(well sort of cool) morning air. I was dressed in my bunny suit(set of coveralls to keep chemicals off my clothes and skin)sweating like mad as we started in on grinding off the osmotic blisters that dot the hull. Every time we pull out, we go at it to find the blisters(not hard as they stand out on the flat hull), puncture them to get the acid out of them(avoiding getting any on our clothes and skin)and then grinding them off with my SKIL grinder till they are all goon off the hull. Tracy was the spotter going ahead of me finding them. Some were easier to find then others as the bubbles had burst and you could clearly see the acid from what was underneath running down the side. With grinder in hand and lots of 40 grit sand paper, I took them down one at a time til all you could see was bare fiberglass. Several dozen of them met their match with us today. Now the hull is covered in lots of white circular patches all over the place. A dot here and a dot there. When we were in Kudat on the north side of Borneo during one of our haul outs, we ground down dozens of them. Well over 100! These suckers are supposedly caused by water getting under the fiberglass and then reacting to the chemicals it runs into. When we were in Kudat, we would grind down a bunch and fill them and the next day, there would be more, lots more. In the end, we ground down what we could and then filled in the spots with epoxy filler, sanded then down a bit and then sealed them with a barrier coat and fresh bottom paint. This time, we think we saw more when we first hauled out than we do now. Not that many. Now no boat has ever sunk from having these, but it's important to get rind of them when you can. The acid inside the bubbles isn't doing the hull any good by being there. Tomorrow, we will head back down and see if there is any more leakage from what we did today and if there are any more that need attention. As it looked like it was going to pour at any moment, we bagged doing any more and put everything away. Of course, it didn't rain but as it was getting into the mid 90s and I was wearing a literal sweat suit, I was in favor of stopping as the Sun was beating down on my suit. I had sweat running out of the legs and sleeves of the suit. Add on wearing latex gloves and the sweat from my hands had filled the gloves with water(YUCK). I took off the suit and headed for the showers to get off what had still made it's way to my skin and hair. Oh, it felt so good to just stand under the nozzle and let the cool(no hot water in these showers)water run down my body from the top of my head to the toes. I even brought my shoes in to get washed. Two shampoos and lots of soap and a brush and I was good to go. When I returned to Zephyr, Tracy had filled the boat with smoke as she was toasting bread for a fried egg sandwich. She did the same thing yesterday for a BLT. I'm amazed the smoke alarm didn't go off.
After lunch, I headed to the laundry room to do our laundry as Tracy took off for the internet room to find us some more shows to watch later and see some of her shows(Top Chef). I joined her there after the laundry was done. There had to have been some kind of party at the yard today as there were dozens of cars parked all over it. Even the space next to us was full of three cars. No clue what was going on but glad that there wasn't a music system blaring it's sounds through the yard as happens in one of the other yards.
We headed back to Zephyr just about 1700 for a nice night of quiet. It still looks strange to see all the teak gone of Zephyrs decks. So much white and hopefully no leaks.
Tomorrow, back down to finish the paint removal and grind down some more blisters if we find any. I guess we will see in the morning.
The picture today is another shot of the cabin top showing the non skid that was under the teak. Such a shame.