Bristol-Blue Lake Michigan Sailing Adventures

  Another great project from Sailrite.  This is one of the more complicated projects I've done.  There is a little cutting, long sewing runs, and a bunch of hardware.  Sailrite has moved to a paperless model so study up on the  You Tube video first. Sailrite service is super.  On this project we had a miscommunication about the color of the fabric and Sailrite's service stepped right up and fixed it.   Measuring is the first step. There are two ways the fabric can be laid out depending on the diameter of the rolled furler. After the measuring it is time to get out the hot knife and cut. Sew Sew some more. Bam UV protection for your fore sail without a bulky cover on the edge of your sails.   Video Montage 1 Installed video.

Over the past few years, I've started to gather quite a collection of cleaning supplies, polishing compounds, and waxes. Having a yellow boat has accelerated this collection. This being the third year with Woodstock I've had the opportunity to try three different polishing compounds head to head.  The first two years I used 3M Heavy oxidation remover followed up with their Finesse Polish. The first year I went over this with the 3M paste wax and the second I used Turtle Wax. I personally feel the Turtle Wax held up better and gave a nicer shine.  This spring I decided to give something else a try and ordered some Total Boat after watching Andy at Boatworks . If you have not seen his youtube channel you should check it out.  This is a two-part product as well Total Buff and Total Shine.  My father also came by this year and he has been using the Mcguires Products on his boats and camper. So we gave them a head-to-head comparison on the yellow hull. While the Mcguires ...

This year Tower Marine has me in yard storage and I'm less than 100 feet from the power! I decided I to have to take this opportunity to go to work on the deck with the power sanders and get some prep done.  Things always look worse before they get better right. I started by grinding on the hatch with my dremel tool. It had a lot of gel coat cracks and I found the dremel to be the perfect tool to open up the gel coat, so I could fill them with West System 410 fairing compound. After the first round I sanded and laid down a layer of high build laquer primer. Then I sanded and filled again. Then another layer of laquer primer. It is not perfect but it will be much better than what I started with.  The cockpit area remains one of the trickest to work in.  All the corners and working around the drains has taken some time. I removed all the hatches and sanded in all the little crevise that allow water to drain from the seating. It took quite a while to get all the traveler pos...

This weekend I continued working on the cockpit floor. This is the outside of the area I'm building up support for. The cockpit is mainly what is precipitating this project. It is pretty scuffed up and has had some modifications done over the years.   On the inside, I'm building up the corner with West System coated matting. Last weekend I was thwarted by gravity.  The layer I put on stuck to the vertical points with no problem but it fell off the horizontal (bottom of the floor) sometime after I left. Hopefully, this second time is the charm.  I also got a 1st coat of filling primer on the hatch. I will need to do some more filling and sanding but the first coat of primer will help me see where I need to work more. Still trying to decide on a white paint for the smooth surfaces of the boat. But the Kiwi Grip arrived this week and I love the box it came in.  I'm going to have to keep this away for the penguins.   

 With another amazing weather weekend, I decided it was time. One of the projects I've been eyeing on Woodstock is a deck re-finish. To make this happen I started with a bit of boat yoga.  I emptied out the sail lockers and went down in them to lay a few layers of supporting fiberglass mat to the bottom of the floor. The floor has some spider cracking and I think the extra support below will help prevent it from coming back once the top is ground out and filled.  The hatch is one of the areas with the most spider cracking so I ground out the offending areas with my Dremel tool and then mixed up some West system with 410 fairing compound.   The non-skid deck in the cockpit is in pretty rough shape and I've been doing a lot of research to figure out what to use.  I want to keep the original look of the non-skid and the best match I've found is Kiwi Grip.  I'm still up in the air on what to use on the smooth surfaces like the hatch and bulkhead where the ...

I discovered that my Mirage 24 fore triangle set up is very similar to that of a J-24. So I was able to pick up a good condition used racing sail for cheap to replace my aging Genoa. This weekend I laid it over my old sail to check the dimension would work and then got to work converting it for my furler. This is an easier conversion than last year's as the sail leading edge is sized perfectly for my furler application.  Here is the link for the process from last time.  This was much easier I simply removed the hanks and sewed the sail tape on.  No cutting or dimension changes for this sail.   Merry Christmas Here is a Quick Video I clipped together of the Stitching. @chrisbroadwater0 Sail Repair for Woodstock. ##mirage24 bristolblueblogspot.com ♬ Holly Jolly Christmas - Michael Bublé

Santa Clause was good to Woodstock this year. He brought me a new Sail Rite mainsail cover kit and some luff tape for a roller furler conversion.  After some debating back and forth on whether or not to just order the fabric, parts, and pieces I decided to go with the kit for the cover.  First I thought I would just make a copy of the cover I currently have but by the time I added it all up the kit was only a few dollars more and offered pre-laid out directions and patterns.  The first step is to layout the material. I went with Sunbrella silver to match the bimini I installed this summer.   Sail Rite  marks all the lines you need to cut right out for you on the fabric.  I lay a cutting board underneath so as not to mark up the floors. Then it is pretty simple to just follow the pre-laid outlines with a hot knife. My hot knife is not a $150 specialty tool. It is a harbor freight job that doubles as a wood burner. It does a really ni...