Rain stops play (painting)

Whilst the weather since my last update hasn’t been particularly nasty is has been cold and showery. The official records show that January was a windier, colder and drier month than the norm here in Stanley with sunshine well below the average. This made my task of painting the topsides more difficult and time consuming that I had hoped.

Anyway with perseverance some early mornings and late evenings (to take advantage of the sunny quiet times of day) I have put two coats of hi-build epoxy on the topsides followed by three coats of white polyurethane top coat.  Three coats of anti-fouling have been put on the underwater sections. The anodes are on and everything is ready for the re-launching, but I am waiting for the prop-shaft ; which is at a machinist to have some scoring repaired.

I have a new cutlass bearing to go in, new rubber bushes for the shaft to gearbox coupling, and a new boot for the PSS shaft seal all ready to go in once I have the shaft back so all parts of the drive train will have been reconditioned. I even have a rope cutter to put on the shaft in front of the propeller.

Whilst out of the water I have installed new transducers. A tri-data speed, depth and temperature unit that connects directly to the NMEA 2000 network, and a sonar transducer that will connect to a stand alone Furuno LS4100 monochrome plotter. The tri-data transducer will be the one normally used to feed speed data to the instruments to provide log information and to calculate true wind speed. The sonar will be used mainly for feeling our way into tricky anchorages and for assessing the bottom type; it also has better range than the tri-data so will be used if I want to ping the bottom in deep water.

The other big(ish) job whilst out of the water was replacing all of the sea-cocks. The old ones were not really fit for purpose as they were simply PVC water pipe ball valves. I have now fitted proper marine valves made by TruDesign a New Zealand company who seem to make a range of good stuff.

The latest job while I wait for the prop shaft is to polish up the aluminium toe-rail and re-mount it on new nylon spacers that isolate it from the steel tabs that it all bolts too. The toe-rail had been painted but paint and aluminium never go that well together especially where the paint gets dinged a lot so by stripping the old paint and leaving bare aluminium I hope for a nicer look in the long term with less maintenance.