Priming finished

Now that Courtney's back in the flatlands, the last primer coat is on the topsides. Blue boot top and bulwarks to follow this weekend, with pictures even.

Cruising, not building

Courtney's been out in BC cruising aboard Island Eagle, and having a fine time of it, too. We've run across some interesting boats.

The other day in Montague Harbour we saw a Diesel Duck 462 (Mandarin, which was the very first 462 built by Seahorse Yachts, in fact) - this is significant because Courtney wants to retire on a Duck one day. What a lovely little ship!

We also ran across Mareva a couple of times, first in Montague and then when we moored right next to her in Ganges on Saltspring Island. Scott almost bought Mareva before he settled on Island Eagle.

Finally, for those of you who haven't seen Island Eagle herself, here's a nice arty shot framed by driftwood. Real purty, yup.

Courtney should be back in Winnipeg on Tuesday, and Shilling construction (well, painting) should resume shortly thereafter.

Quick note

Just a quick note to say that the second coat of bottom paint is on. Further painting was prevented by Courtney's band playing at Folklorama for a week, not to mention the cold and ear infection the subsequent week. Still getting over that, and tomorrow it's off to Island Eagle for some cruising, so don't expect any further news for a couple of weeks.

THEN we'll be back at it, you damn betcha.

Bottom paint

First coat of bottom paint is on. Pictures!

Where have we been?

I've been in Brandon, headlining at their excellent little folk festival. Tara's been busy with other stuff. We have done some work, though.

Last week we went out to get ready for bottom painting (oh, hush!) but Detail Girl became sidetracked by the leading edges of the bilge keels. Too square, they were, and in dire need of rounding off ("mumble overseas mumble first place mumble fritz...").

Sooooo I went at them with a chisel, and Detail Girl (I really have to make her a T-shirt) sanded them, and we put on a coat of primer, and we sanded the rest of the primer, and we washed the hull, and that was pretty much our evening. Dad was good enough to sand and add another coat of primer (after all, this was bare wood, not sealed like the rest of the bottom) the next morning.

When we arrived last night, we sanded the second coat of primer and Pronounced It Good. Then it was time to build a water level and mark the waterline in preparation for the aforementioned bottom painting (stop giggling!). What's a water level, you ask? Well, I say, I'll tell you.

Long ago in Olden Tymes, there was no such thing as laser levels. Shocking, I know. So in order to make sure a bunch of things were at the same level, you either measured from a known reference, or you used a water level. They're particularly good for waterlines, given the irregular shape of a hull.

We built ours from an old piece of Tygon™ tubing, a piece of garden hose to which the tubing was carefully joined (ah, electrical tape), a pail, and a dive-belt weight to hold the end of the hose at the bottom of the pail. Here's a picture:

You can see one end of the hose disappearing into the pail; the business end is the tubing, temporarily jammed into the pail handle for safekeeping.

To set up the level, we placed the tubing end up against the transom/keel joint and added water to the pail until the meniscus (look it up if you have to!) was at the right level for the line between the bottom paint and the boot stripe. Then we moved the tubing along the hull, marking out the waterline from stern to bow on both sides.

After that came the fun of springing a batten along the marks to get the fairest line possible, and marking the line on the hull. This took six hands in places (Mom helped) because wood doesn't like to be bent like that. We think the line looks pretty good.

The next step was to very carefully tape off the line with expensive blue masking tape, which has a very fine edge, then add another strip of cheaper and wider masking tape below the blue stuff. By the time we finished all that, and disassembled the water level and returned its parts to their proper places, it was time to head home. But we're all set to put on two coats of bottom paint over the weekend. See how good the tape line looks? (Oooooh. Aaaaah.)

Oh yeah, you can also see the newly rounded bilge keels if you look closely at the second picture. Which I know you all will. Heh.

Primer coat on!

No work last weekend because it was Folk Festival time. It was an oddity as the annual gathering of the freaky clans goes, because we missed Friday night due to a Mark Knopfler concert (awesome) and Saturday night due to the worst weather in Festival memory (cooold with horizontal rain and extreme winds). We decided a hot bath and whisky beat freezing our butts off Saturday night.

Anyway, Ed still hasn't sent the pix (c'mon, Ed!), but last week we sanded the sealer coats and washed the boat. Tonight we washed once more with thinner and brushed on a primer coat. It looks pretty good.

We'll put on the first of two coats of bottom paint this weekend, I think, and then sand and prime and sand the topsides before we put on the topsides paint. I'll try to post more pictures; our friend Malcolm came to check out the boat and took a bunch of shots of us painting.

Edited on November 17th 2008:

We finally got a bunch of pictures from Malcolm. Here are some of my favourites from the "priming the hull" series:

Washing with thinner

Half-primed

Giggling about something

The promised pix

Not much has changed, really - just that there are now three coats of S-1 sealer on all the bare wood and fillets. The stem (first pic) is nice and shiny and waterproof. You can see the bilge keels and skeg, too, but the second shot makes them a little more clear.

That's probably it for sealer - now we just have to fine-sand all over and give everything a good wash, and we're ready for primer!