For my dear captain's bithday, we usually have pre- and post-celebrations! Yesterday, May 29th, was a really really tough pre-birth day! Heiner spent all day welding and fixing La Buena Vida's beautiful body! Grrrrrrrrrr...he finished the work and was quite exhausted when we got back home! He even had difficulty lifting his beer glass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But our friends Karen and Lindsay came for supper...Thanks to good company, good food and rum, he managed to blow all the candles without difficulty!

 After the boat work, we like to come home and relax in the garden: the trees and flowers are just gorgeous at the moment...

Butyl caulking on steel and wood needs to be removed

 Time flies...when you are having fun! We are making good progress: our neighbours at the yard are impressed with our stamina! So are we! After all, we are older than 15 years ago (!) when we bought the boat!!!

All cleaned up, rust removed, and ready to be epoxied!

So, today, we began painting the windows with epoxy...it took a lot of time to remove the butyl caulking from the steel and from the wood, then Heiner took his big power tool out and wiped out the rust! No more: virgin steel window frames! It was fun to apply our clear epoxy on this virgin steel!!!! because it looks like it would NEVER rust again!!!!

The cabin topside had a nice wooden trimming: also gone.  There were several spots with serious rust building underneath...

REMOVING WOOD TRIMMING

REMOVING WOOD TRIMMING

THE NAKED TRUTH

The lexan panels covering the 4 large windows were also removed: messy, messy job due to the butyl caulking.  It was a very efficient caulking material...as long as one does not need to remove it! 

And last but not least, the pads for the winches as well as seats have been removed: rust, rust, rust. First coat of clear epoxy has been put on tonight.

Now can work on the deck. Wood on steel is a combination calling for trouble: water gets trapped in and it rusts.  With two years in the salt water environment, the rust issue is even worse.  OK, the wooden  toe rail has to be taken down...and the rust sanded away.  It takes 2 good days of work to do both sides, to paint one coat of clear epoxy and 2 coats of gray!!!Ouch! our poor knees!

Oh! already empty!!!!!

Second coat done...

Smoothhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

BETWEEN TRAVELS...we read, cook, walk and now that the weather has finally gotten less rainy and warmer, we started the LBVRP (La Buena Vida big renovation project)... Monday, May 9th at 8 am, the sandblasting company started putting tarps and sheets on, around and below La Buena Vida. Heiner got there in time to oversee the work and apparently behaving like an expectant father, exhibing a mixture of thrill and nervousness. And it was a difficult beginning, indeed, with only 75% of one side of the hull taking 6 hours of blasting. The white epoxy is still adhering too well to the hull on certain spots, and not at all on other areas. So, at about 5pm, we penetrated the plastic tent around the boat and tried to clean the hull as well as possible before painting with our gray epoxy. A lot of sand on the boat and on the plastic sheet on the floor...After 3/4 of an hour, we had covered the sandblasted surface with the gray epoxy: it looks smooth ! Heiner did a great job with the rolling, which went very well even with undiluted epoxy mixture.

75% of one side in 6 hours of blasting

Looks like snow but it is sand!

A boat is always big enough if YOU do the painting!!!!

Tuesday....the whole boat will be finished, hopefully...