Well it's that time of year again to take the cover off the boat and due the routine maintenance to your sailboat. This year I have decided to move my Hunter 28.5 to Haverstraw marina as they have the deepest water on the Hudson and they lowered their slip prices. All this helps in a weak economy. This year I plan to do a few upgrades to the electronics with a new speed and depth finder. I will mount them on the binnacle so I can see them better at the helm. I also plan on doing some rewiring to the stereo and resealing some leaks. Then it's cosmetic time. I will redo the Poliglow as it was really successful last year and really scrub her. I plan on some gelcoat touchips as well. I might get a new Harken B16STA winch for the dog house from Marinerparts.com . I am also planning to replace my Hood Seafurl 810LD to a new Profurl C290 Coastal Furling unit. This should be a fun year of sailing on my Hunter 28.5 sailboat.

I was recently buying some gear at www.marinerparts.com and found that they are running a promotion. It's a great idea. They extend a 5% discount to all members of yacht clubs, marinas, sailing schools, boating forums (Maybe sailblogs.com) and other membership related boating and sailing organizations. All that is required is a link on the yachtclubs or organizations web page. Pretty simple. I am going to tell my yacht club to post it so I can save 5% more off of my sailing hardware purchases.

Ok, I finally broke down and did the the whole boat with PoliGlow. i must say the boat looks brand new. The gelcoat was so tired befor and now you can see your face in it. Truly amazing.. We will see how it hold up, but so far so good and I am lovin life..

After tons of compounding and waxing for the past two years, I am not sure if the gelcoat will ever shine like my old S2 7.9. Maybe the Hunter gelcoat is just of lesser quality or the previous owner didn't keep up with it but it just never shines like i want it. So my wife and I went to the Annapolis boat show last october and she bought me a kit of Poliglow. Now I did the research ou there and it seems most are in favor of this restorer if your gelcoat is beyond waxing. There are reports of yellowing so I am not 100% on this stuff. I learned my lesson with these quick fix items as when I was restoring the deck a guy next to me recommended Penetrol. My boatyard buddy and longtime bodyshop and professional glass man said " Just go and buy baby oil. it will condition the deck gelcoat so it will stop chalking", I should have listened, instead I took the advice of my boat neighbor and used Penetrol thinking it was a richer oil. Well it turned out to be varnish and ruined some parts of the deck. If you use that stuff, KNOW what you are doing. It will never come off. So with that lesson under my belt, I decided only to use the Poliglow on my transome. This will take the most sun also, so if it does yellow or crack it will show there. My reasoning is, if i have to remove it it will be easier to remove from the transom, than the whole hull.. So i will deal with a dull hull and a shiny transom and update you all next year as to the results.

Last year I desperatly needed new windows for my hunter 28.5. The previous owner used horrible light blue plexiglass for his windows which looked terrible. I found a company called Mark Plastics in CA that made a brand new pair of Lexan windows for me. Boy they came out nice. I also installed a new Harken traveler and some new handrailes pictured here from Defender.com and Marinerparts.com. These are my two favorite marine supplies. Defender is great for your basic boating supplies and general marine products and marinerparts.com is great for all the best sailing hardware and products. They both really helped me out in getting this old Hunter 28.5 back on its keel...

Well she is just about ready to launch for another great season on the hudson. I ordered a New Harken roller furler and a new Lewmar Size 10 cabin hatch from marinerparts.com and they should arrive any day. I cant wait to have the roller furler installed as this will make sailing much more pleasurable. Right now I have a Hood Continuous line furler which is not great.