Painting

The boat is finally painted. Kind of. It's taken nearly 4 weeks, but it's got paint on it again. It took a really really long time to get it all smoothed out and sanded, and I've done the majority of it myself in the last week or 2. I did have a bit of help - Garth took a day off work somewhere along the way and we did a day together. He's been helping on weekends too.

His mum came up for a visit and got stuck into some sanding for a while, which resulted in the bow being super smooth and perfect. My amazing friends Erin and Mischa came out for a few hours one day and got all dirty as well. George has also been absolutely amazing - he loaned me his epic sander to help get the job done faster and it's really really heavy but really really efficient. I can only lift it above my head for a while, and I spend all day lifting it up then down for a second to give my arms a rest so they don't die. Erin grabbed it and sanded for a few solid hours, probably because she's a machine. Having the two of them help for a few hours was equal to at least a whole days work for me, which is ridiculously awesome - I can't imagine how long this would have taken me if I didn't have wonderful friends.

Garth's family have been amazing - his cousin Matt came out for an entire day and sanded like a boss with the heavy sander. That was fabulous, and with his help I actually managed to get the sanding finished. I wasn't expecting him to come out at all and in the morning on the last day I looked at the boat and thought 'yes, this is it, it will be done today.' So if he hadn't showed up, it would have been yet another day.

I was there until 8 at night that day and Garth came out after work for a few hours to help me, but we finally got the sanding done.

Every day I'd get there, look at it and think 'oh, it's nearly done.' And I'd work on it all day and at the end of that day it would still be nearly done - it was all the fiddly stuff like filling in holes and smoothing them back again, and scraping off that last tiny bit of primer that made it keep taking longer and longer. We could have spent another month making it smooth, but we had to draw the line somewhere. The keel is a bit of a mess, but George said to just leave it. And we trust him completely, so I'm sure it will be fine. He has been ridiculously helpful - he's helped me out with so many things, every time I ask him something he comes right out to help. He's made everything as cheap as possible for us, and I'm sure it hasn't been worth his time financially to have taken us on. It's safe to say I would have been screwed without him.

I had to do the primer myself - Dale and Garth took a day off work last week to come out and paint on the epoxy (Garth had to, but Dale is just awesomesauce), while I mixed batches of epoxy all day and hung around feeling exhausted. So the next day when it was almost dry and they had to go to work again, I came out to do the primer (we had to paint epoxy on to make a solid barrier over the boat because we sanded the gel coat off because there was osmosis in it. In case anybody was wondering. It just creates a hard shell over everything).

George just happened to be around on primer day, and I sat down with my tin of paint and my bucket and my drill and my mixer. I opened the paint, got the drill bit to mix it with, opened the drill out so it would fit into the drill, and then couldn't remember how to make the drill close in around it again. Cue George. So it's safe to say I would have spent a lot of the day being frustrated and clueless if he hadn't helped me out in the beginning - I hadn't realised that I had no painting skills and had conveniently forgotten that I had never painted anything before. The primer is important too, which didn't help my stress levels - it has to be perfect, so I couldn't mess it up.

I also conveniently forgot that the stuff I was painting on was the same stuff I had been scraping off, and I got it all over myself. Then I had a giant rash on my arms for 2 days, which i think was essentially a big burn on my skin. There was even a burnt spot on each side above my pants where I had pulled my pants up with paint covered fingers. So the painting was actually really fun and satisfying at first, but ended in frustration at not being finished yet and a lot of painful skin.

Then Dale, Garth and Josh went out this weekend and finished the primer and the antifouling. Because they're amazing. We decided to do one coat of hard antifouling in blue and another of soft antifouling in black - the soft wears off easier so is better for getting off all the barnicles that want to make friends with our boat in the tropics. By having a different colour at the bottom we can see when it's almost all worn through, so we know when to redo it before it becomes a mess again. Unfortunately I couldn't come out because being on the boat plus working nights all week had  left me kind of exhausted. I'm also sick now, probably from sanding in the rain last week. I donned full wet weather gear, but I was still out in the cold wind and rain all day. 

So the three of them finished off the painting with two coats of antifouling - we wanted to do three, but it's going to rain all week again. We would be back in the water by now if it wasn't for the rudder - after being out of the water for nearly a month it still has water leaking out of it. This is not ideal. We're not sure what to do now - we can't seal it back up if it's still full of water, but we can't leave it out forever. We may have to get a new one if it doesn't sort itself out soon. But we definitely need to go back in the water asap. The middle of the rudder is foam, and I think some bad repair jobs (shocking) on the outside let water leak in, and the foam just soaked it all up. George drilled some holes in it when we first pulled it out, and then we drilled more holes in it when they didn't work, but every time you move it around or poke the holes water comes spilling out. We're not sure what to do... patching it up with epoxy and then dumping it back in the water is something we're seriously considering, because it will last a while longer. It will just have to be replaced eventually if we don't fix it properly.

Garth has gone all nerdy and done up a table with the work we need to do and the amount of time it will take, so we are now freaking out about getting everything done on time. When the rain eases off this week I'm going to go out and probably do another coat of antifouling. I also want to paint eyes on the bow - I realise this is not important compared to the other things we have to do, but if we're stuck out of the water anyway I may as well do something with the time. I want to have eyes just under the waterline, so when the boat is heeled over an eye peeks out from the water then goes back in when we tack or flatten out. When the water is clear you can also see them through the water, which is cool. I've been looking at taniwha eyes, because I think we should have something to tie our baby to New Zealand. She's a kiwi now, after all.

We managed to get somebody out last week to take off our prop, replace the bearing and put it back on again. We were going to just do it ourselves but George convinced us to get it done properly and I'm glad we listened - it would have taken us a whole day to get the prop off without a prop puller. So it's all shiny and good again!

I also need to get out and sand the deck, because that needs to be done asap. Garth says we can't go skiing again this weekend because he hates me. Or because we have to get the boat done. But I'm beginning to suspect we won't be doing any skiing this year, which is really sad.

I've had a lot of fun hanging out at the boat yard, and I've got to know most of the other people that hang around. Most of them have dogs - there's dogs everywhere. They're all adorable. The awesome marine store George took me to (Provedoring) has a dog called Sunny. I'm there nearly every day now, getting advice and picking stuff up. When I first started going there I thought it was charming that there was a dog in the store - he's got a really friendly face and as you're walking through the aisles you trip over dog toys. He loves a good pat and always wants to play. He used to come up to me with his toy and drop it at my feet and wait there expectantly. Now when I walk in he comes running up and goes crazy as soon as he sees me. In the last week he's started barking, running up to me, jumping on top of me and nearly knocking me over. Then he slobbers all over my face and I end up in a heap on the ground underneath a barrage of dog kisses. He's one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met.

The guy there, Ian, has been really amazingly helpful. He's come out to the boat a few times to check up on me, and has given me a lot of good advice. Whilst he does have an agenda, as he has a store to run, I don't feel like he's trying to push any products on me like most people - he legitimately just wants to help. The other day I was trying to explain to him how we wanted to paint it (with a layer of epoxy and an epoxy barrier coat, which nobody seems to sell in New Zealand). He told me what he thought we should do, but then rang somebody up to make sure and spent ages talking to them and organising a sheet with instructions for us to take away to make sure we didn't screw it up. Which is nice, because now we can keep it on the boat with our papers and it tells us exactly what's under there. What he suggested was Garth's second choice for painting, after three weeks of intensive research, so that's good.

So now we're just waiting. Waiting for the water to drain, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting to get the damn thing back in the water. Hopefully I'll have the deck sanded and the rudder fixed by this weekend, but that's not likely. I just miss staying in bed on a rainy day, instead of putting wet weather gear on and doing boat work. I suppose I should probably get used to it.

- Monique