It is the time of the year when boat’s already out of the water begin to be aware of the loving caress of their owners as they muster themselves with energetic thoughts. This year there have been too many dismal days during January with more than a bucketful of wind thrown in, but now the month approaches its end. Whimbrel, sadly, has had just a single day’s use…
Down in my club’s yard there has been a noticeable pick up of busy bees around ‘the hives’ and I too have booked for Whimbrel to be lifted out towards the end of March.
The centre plate lifting wire and its pin are due to be renewed, but there is more to this unusual activity.
When ‘we’ antifouled Whimbrel’s bottom last spring, the boat’s Bottom Manager – yes that’s the good mate – pointed out that she thought the bottom could do with stripping off. Heck!
That was quickly followed up with, ‘I can do it…’ so after discussing this ‘need’ I decided that it wasn’t a job for the faint hearted and began to think more about this during last summer and into the autumn.
She’s damned good Whimbrel’s mate is: she gets down to it. There are few boat wives in reality that actually do this and I greatly appreciate mine!
The antifoul paint has never been cleaned back to bare wood since her build in 1983/4. In some places, especially around the wind/waterline area down to her bilge stubs it has been flaking for a number of years. In general excess coating thickness has become quite thick up to 2 to 3 mm. (or more…)
Yes, it could be scraped off after a hard blast. Our pressure washer often takes away chunks of late … but I did not feel as if I have the stamina currently (prostate cancer medication – essentially ‘chemo’) to be of much use and just couldn’t see Christobel doing it largely alone. She disagreed!
So, the old girl is coming out. The top sides need some attention too. It’ll be hard sanded, touched up and fully over-coated while out as well.
I plan to chock Whimbrel a little higher than in the plate above, to make underneath work easier…
The bottom is going to cleaned off with a water/slurry blast by Willpine Blasting Ltd who are based at Dauntless Boat Yard. The company doesn’t have a web site: they use a facebook page to ‘spread the word’.
See: https://www.facebook.com/willpineblasting/
before ‘attacking’ Whimbrel’s bottom, Charlie is going to do a test patch to check on bottom surface. He is confident that apart from a little roughness the wood will remain undamaged. Subsequent sanding will not be a hardship…
Once cleaned off, we’re away for a land holiday during our 42nd wedding anniversary week, leaving our good ship in the open air to dry a little.
Yesterday, the Bottom Manager called into our local paint supplier for the necessaries. Oh, the Toplac urethane enamel and varnish are for me!
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