Bristol-Blue Lake Michigan Sailing Adventures

  As the sanding wraps up I start to look for a time to paint. It is Spring here in Michigan and it has started to rain. We have had three days of on and off sprinkles. While I know I could go down and sand and fill a few more spots here and there between the raindrops at some point, you have to stop and draw the line. I could go and go to perfection on this 45-year-old boat but why. We intend on sailing it and it will undoubtedly get a nick here, a scratch there, and a little line chafe there. Now we wait for the right weather, not too hot, not too wet, not too cold at night. These outside projects take patients. There are other projects to work on while we wait. Who knows with the prep done or nearly done maybe the boat will be launched before the deck is even finished. 

Video 1:  VC 17 paint mix:   Stir It Up, Baby.   Save those carry-out dinner cartons they are the best paint roller trays.  You can close them so your paint does not evaporate.  Video 2: Legends After trimming in the waterline and keel. It is time to cover some square footage with the roller. Video 3: Time Warp Some different views from around the boat.  Video 4: Moonlighting Finishing up the last section with the roller. Video 5: Almost Time for a Drink One more trim coat around the waterline and she is done. I always do a final trim coat around the waterline with some of the thicker paint from the bottom of a quart.

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 was good it

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 position numb

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 compass is mounted

  I made it down to the boat last weekend. These warm days pushing 50 degrees make it crazy tempting to pull the covers and get to work.  I suspect Mother Nature is about to throw a giant snow ball at us.   In anticipation of more snow I pulled the cover off the bow to take a few measurements and recoil the roller furler. For now I'm leaving the cockpit covered.  Spring can't get here soon enough and there were no shortage of people in the yard working on little projects today.