Cripes... It's March!

Heeeelp... it's well into March and I have done virtually nothing since Ciao Bella came out at the end of last season.   So here come the excuses.. Work is mental at the moment, the weather has been the worst since I don't know when, the valentines day storm wrecked the pier at the sailing club did a lot of damage to the building and my Mum has been poorly so playing with boats has been way down the list.

 Anyway, the sun came out today so I snuck out and did a bit. I started with stripping paint from the tread areas on the foredeck.  I used Owetrol marine stripper, my expectations where low as I've never had much luck with chemical strippers.

I coated the textured areas with a thick layer of the Owetrol, it sits like a gel on the surface and hopefully does its stuff.  An hour in and it didn't appear to be doing much.

The next items to grab my attention were the locker lids and wash boards.  The washboards got a quick flash over with the sander and were treated to a coat of varnish, only another four or five to go!  

 The locker lids needed a bit more attention.  One of the lids needed some repair.  The rain water had got under the top layer of the ply and had started to lift it.   I used a stanley knife to slice into the effected area and squidged  PVA in, I then put weights on to hold it down.  I hadn't got round to filling the grooves in the port lid with Sika flex last year so I masked that up smoothed in the black stuff.

While the paint stripper was doing what appeared to be not a lot and the varnish and sikaflex were drying I turned on the main sheet traveller cleats.  These had started to pull out during the course of last season.  When I took them off the wood screws that hold each cam down had bent and the bolt through the base plate was threaded into the GRP without a nut on the back of it.

 I found some suitable bolts, drilled through the grp and bolted them down on a bed of Sikaflex.  The pic above shows the inside.  The base plate bolt now has a penny washer and a nut on it but there was no space for washers of any kind on the bolts for the cams.  I need two more bolts as the I'd run out of the length that I needed to go through the cams, base, GRP, nut and have enough for a few spare threads :)

Meanwhile the Stripper had been busy working away.  It doesn't bubble or flake or do anything to show that its working but once the pressure washer get to work the paint just washes off.  Below is a piece of paint dislodged from the boat.