Over Coming Seasonal Set Backs

So last weekend I headed down to put a coat of bottom paint on Kraken.  I knew I did not have enough paint to finish the job and figured I'd stop for lunch and pick up a quart on the way back.  After searching West Marine's shelves and finding nothing, I got some help and found out the nearest quart was in Washington.  They would have to order it in for me.  Kraken sat for the week with three quarters of the bottom painted. It looked kinda silly.

This weekend, I am on a winning streak,  just like the Detroit Tigers.  I picked up the paint this morning and even made it into Randy's West Shore Boat Repairs.  Randy's shop is tucked away I the back side of Douglas. It is a friendly place.  It also happens to be one of the only places I know that carries the spark plug I need for my Mercury 2.5hp in stock.  I've also dealt with him a few other times when rebuilding my British Sea Gull.  An over all great place to get weird parts and pieces.  I found out today they also work on tractors in the off season.  We had a great chat about a tractor baseball.  Yeah you read that right tractor baseball.  My uncle plays antique tractor baseball and I was telling them about it.

Back to Tower Marine I found the boat yard was a-buzz with activity.  The owner of the boat next to me and his dad were busily removing the prop and cutlass bearing from his Pearson 30.  I had to do a double take on that one because they had already removed the rudder.  Pearsons have a very distinctive rudder design that swoops forward. Electric cords were spread across the ground and ladders where clanking around the yard.  Power buffers buzzed on and off.

I got right to work.  The water in the yard had been turned on so I started by washing the grunge and grime off the hull.  Then went to work cleaning and waxing.  The boat came out pretty well I had a tough time getting all the grime off the boot stripe this year so I'll have to work on that more later.  Next I finished up the bottom paint and touched up the areas that got messed up when I washed the upper portion of the hull.    

Shinny

I finished of the day by installing he new interior compass mount.  I picked this up at Wolf Marine's swap meet last fall.  This new compass will probably spend most of its time down in the cabin protected from the suns rays the old compass will be on a shelf at the house just in case I drop this new one over board.  I still can't believe my luck finding this exact compass and bracket. This may actually be the start of a future navigation station now that I think about it.

Other tasks today included installing the new chaffing guards on the side stays.  

Spring is here and I'm so ready to get on the water.