Bottom Job, Blisters and other Yard work

The yard called me this morning with the good news that the boat was ready! Yaay! This means I can pick her up on saturday and finally motor back to my berth. My best friend (who is the one responsible for getting me into trawlers in the first place) is going to join me on the 3 hour cruise back home.

Regarding the bottom job - During negotiations when I had the boat surveyed they found gelcoat blisters, but upon sounding and visual inspection, none extended into the laminate. The paint on the boat at the time of sale was flaking off in sheets, which is visually disturbing to see, but the 23 year old boat had never been stripped so I half expected that.

I had it chemically stripped and then rough sanded down to the gelcoat so that 1) I could really see the extent and the depth of the blistering and 2) so that the new $200 a gallon bottom paint had something it could actually adhere to.

Here it is stripped:
What we found were about 200 dime sized blisters that were just under the gelcoat. I pondered it for a bit and decided to have them fixed by the grind and epoxy fill method.

Heres the other side: Fast forward a week and the work is complete! 2 coats of trinidad on a smooth bottom sure looks pretty.


23x20 "wheel of fortune"

A little zinc chromate on the stern thruster:

Over the weekends I managed to repair my cracked swimstep (PO backed it into the dock) and get a coat of cetol on it. I repaired the crack by drilling a 12" hole from front to back, clamping it , permanently through bolting it and then filling with epoxy. Sand down the high spots, coat with cetol and booyah, stronger than original. Needs some more light sanding and a couple more coats of cetol but the hard work is done.


This saturday will be the trip home. The boat and I are as ready as we're going to get and I'm looking forward to it. Look for another post sunday night. The new raritan head gets here friday.

-C