Back in the water

All of the stress.

The boat is back in the water again. It probably wasn't ready to go back in, but we dumped it in anyway. We ended up having it out for around two months, which was ridiculous. We're not just slow though, it was because of the whole rudder situation...

The rudder saga:

When we first pulled the boat out of the water the rudder had a crack in it, and it was full of water. George patched it up, drilled some holes and told us to let it drain for a while. Which we did. Then after a few weeks it was still full of water, so we drilled more holes to help it drain. There was so much water in some of them that it came gushing out when we drilled into it, some of them spurting on Garth's face.



It was drying out, but it was drying very slowly - probably because of Wellington's miserable weather which was giving us very little sunshine. It was at this point that we realized we should have taken the whole thing off and put it somewhere warm with a dehumidifier, but it was too late. We could have also hollowed it out and replaced the foam inside, as that's what was holding all the water. Also too late, as we didn't want to have the boat out any longer. After a few more weeks, with at least 1 week of solid rain, it was still full of water.

I did a lot of research and talked to a lot of people and came to the conclusion that it didn't matter - the rudder wasn't going to fall off, most of the water was out, it would probably get more in it anyway and the worst that could happen is that the stern would be heavier. So we decided to just seal it up and put the boat back in the water. Done. Which worked in theory...

So I sanded it back, injected epoxy filler into the holes and put duct tape over the filler to keep it smooth and in place. Then I came back a day later and removed the duct tape to find that the water from the holes had pushed all the filler out. So I sanded it back, dried the holes with a hair drier, made the filler extra thick and tried again. I then repeated that every day for like a week, with a few days of other experiments thrown in.

We tried spurting high pressure foam into the holes to chase out the water. I came back a day later when it was dry, cut the excess off, sanded it back and put filler over it again. Then the next day I sanded the filler back, and wet patches appeared underneath the filler. Fun. So then I decided to fair the rudder properly, which involved covering the whole thing with filler. More wet spots once I'd sanded it back.

Just before I went crazy, George managed to find some time out of his busy schedule to help us. He dried it out with a heat gun and filled it with quick drying glue. Just glue! Then he patched it all up so we could finally paint it and put it back into the water. The day we dropped her in we had epoxy that hadn't set, wet antifouling, and a last minute mad dash for some lock tite to secure our anode. It's all under water now, so none of that matters because I don't have to look at it any more.

I feel like we did a bit of a dodgy job, and we could have spent a lot more time doing everything better. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and its a million times better than it was, so I guess that's something. The hull is so solid that nothing is ever getting through, but the keel and rudder will need to be done again soon.

But we got it back in the water, which is good. Except the batteries were flat so the engine wouldn't start. Which is bad. Our friendly haul-out neighbour Dave tried hooking a few jumper cables up to a car to get some charge in it, while Garth pumped the decompression levers. That didn't work, so eventually Mark from the marina just towed us back to our berth. Awkward.





Lots of other things happened while we were hauled out, and lots of progress was made. I painted on my eye, which is obviously the most important thing. I don't have a picture of it finished from the side, so it obviously looks much better now that it's finished. I put around 4 coats of antifouling paint over it, so it might last a little while - Garth thinks it will be around 3 weeks. We'll see, won't we. I'm fully expecting it to come off quickly, but not that quickly. I'm sure there were more productive things I could have been doing, but I wouldn't be so good at procrastination if I had actually done them.





We had lots of fabulous friends come out and help us, including Rebecca and Zowie. Rebecca spent an entire day helping me sand back the go faster line around the topside, which Garth did not approve of because it wasn't listed as priority 1 on our to do list. However, I needed to do something pretty to the boat that would actually show up once it was back in the water after spending 2 months making the black bit black again - all the work we'd done was going back under the water where you couldn't see it. The stripe turned out really well, and definitely looks a lot better - there were a lot of osmosis bubbles in the paint of the old one, so it was probably a good idea to fix it. The friendly guys from the h20 paint place even gave me the paint to do it with - they've been really nice and helpful with everything.





Zo is wonderful with tools, and among other things she got our fridge all mounted and working - before the freezer bit was kind of just dangling inside of the fridge being useless and freezing everything around it. We opted not to get an actual freezer, but thought having a tiny freezer bit big enough for a cold pack or an ice tray might be a good idea.



We've done lots of sanding to prep the deck for new paint, mostly by hand because it's faster than using our crappy electric sander. We've tied lanyards to lots of things for cat 1, and also because it's a good idea. Oh, and this is what it looks like when your husband leaves a full $300 tin of antifoul paint on the steps in the companionway, forgets it's there and then kicks it over. Whoops.









So we're back in the water, things are getting fixed, and our departure date is getting closer. Phew!

xxx Monique and Garth

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

That depends, are you keeping it?

I would just like to vent for a second.

Over the last few weeks I have talked to a lot of people and overheard a lot of conversations people have been having around me at the boat yard. One phrase I have been asked a lot and I have heard tossed around all the time is "Are you going to keep it?" As in, they're asking whether the person intends on keeping the boat for their own selfish boating needs, or if they're going to palm it off onto some poor unsuspecting person some time in the future. This really really irritates me. Because it always comes up when people are asking advice or talking about how they should do certain things.

"How should i fix this?"
"That depends, are you going to keep it?"

The question implies that they are going to be given different advice dependent on whether or not their boat is for keepsies. If you're just going to sell it, chuck a shitty patch on it and paint over it. If you're going to keep it, I guess you should fix it up good. With sanding and cleaning and filler and more sanding and paint. And I bet this question is what got us in the situation we're in now.

Dodgy repairs and patches and nasty crap that somebody could have taken an extra hour to fix properly and have it last forever, instead of doing it badly and have it last a year or two. I don't understand this at all. We spent years scrimping and saving and planning and dreaming before we found this boat and decided it was going to be ours. We've put our hearts and sweat and tears into it. I can't imagine intentionally making the boat dodgy, and then palming it off onto some other poor bugger whose heart is set on acquiring the perfect boat. To be fair, our problems weren't from the previous owners - they only had the boat for four years, and you're supposed to strip it every 10. They weren't dodgy, just a little bit negligent. Mostly because they didn't really need to strip it - it had to be done in the future, and it would have been a lot of work they didn't need to do. Sand it, chuck on some antifouling, and it will keep going. It was probably whoever owned it before them who messed it all up. Under all the layers of antifouling were so many dodgy repairs. Like they just didn't care. As if they were just fixing it up temporarily and were planning on selling it in the future.

To whoever that guy was, I hate you. And to all other people like him. I hate you too. The glass over my keel is mostly peeling off from bad repairs and it took me three weeks to make the hull pretty again after what you did to it. So I hope karma bites you on the ass.

-Monique