Electrickery

                    Q : What do you get when you combine a 5watt solar panel , Sealed lead acid 

                                         battery a brush-less dc fan and a cheap plastic vent .

                      A : Your very own solar powered cabin ventilation that will run at night .

                                   
                                  I also plan to add a USB port to charge a mobile device .

The painting continues

         

           This week the hulls got a second coat of gloss and the beams are nearly finished too .

The weather has been hot around 30 degrees most of the day great for getting the paint to kick off but there is no way to work without the gazebos in this heat . They don't cover the whole boat but we move them around as we go so we are always painting in the shade .

          Now that all the small bits have a good coat of paint they are ready to be fitted  .

                           The blue paint down to the gunnel really shows off her lines :)

A splash of colour

 After some sanding and masking tape the first coat of gloss is going onto the deck the color is reef blue . The unpainted sections will become the grip parts they will be horizon blue to create a two tone effect .

Rainy days

                  Not much to report today it has been raining hard . The grass is loving the rain !

Getting ready for the final paintwork

                                    The new rudders and beam cleats all shaped and primed . 

 Re-enforcing the main hatches with a batten down the middle tagged in the corners with fiberglass tape .

 The beams are looking a lot better now with some primer on them the norglass primer is excellent and i am actually enjoying working with it . I used a small foam roller like a brush to get into the corners just slopping the paint in and then smoothing it out seemed the best method .

 The new window recesses with 2 coats of primer . Getting close to doing the blue gloss on the decks just need a bit more fairing and sanding .

All the small things

                 Here are the new lashing blocks Lashing blocks cut from marine grade ply then coated  with UN-thickened epoxy to seal the end grain followed by a couple of coats of primer undercoat .

The previous owner had the main hatches set up to open long ways making it hard to climb into the hull from the middle deck . Nice new hinges were fitted so they now open outwards but i needed to add some small timber blocks to get them to fit properly .

                    Using a brick to weigh down the small timber blocks for the new hinges 

The boat is starting to come together and i think i have all the materials now to finish the paintwork .

Catching up the blog

         I decided to catch the blog up because its actually way behind the work we are doing .

 Painting the hulls one side at a time and letting gravity do the work to smooth out the paint seemed the easiest way to get reasonable results . When it came time for the 2 part polyurethane we found that it absolutely loves temps higher than 25 degrees hates any form of moisture and a very light tipping with a soft brush to remove bubbles from the foam roller does the trick . Work fast as a team don't try to go back past the wet edge if you make a mistake its already too late and you'll just make it worse.  

                             
                                   Replacing some more rotten timber on the deck with oak .

 I decided to seal the front hatches up so they are more water tight so a suitable lightweight plastic hatch was fitted into the original hatch lids . The original hatches will be glued and screwed down .

 

The original foward hatches were cleaned up and given a layer of fiberglass to strengthen them and seal them up before painting .

                                           The main hatches received the same treatment 

 Here is the layup for the new rudders the old rudders were simply ply and one had some rot in it we could have repaired it but took the opportunity to make some better ones .

 5 layers of 60z fiberglass cloth are laminated between the two sheets of 6mm ply to achieve the          desired thickness for the new rudder blanks . The laminate will be super strong and longer lasting than the original rudders .

 After being clamped flat to the bench for 2 days we cut the blanks and boy are they strong . I doubt they will ever twist or warp and will probably outlast the boat . Super happy with the result .

 The old windows had two many bolts . We are making the new ones recessed and with no fasteners simply glued in with a special UV hardened Sikaflex  . The primer for this is fairly expensive but drilling all those holes in the new Lexan seemed like a bad idea .

The new windows are all cut out and ready to fit as soon as we finishing painting the decks and cabin tops .

 Here we have The rudders after shaping and a layer of fiberglass on the outside .

 I bought some canoe rudder Gudgeons from Duckworks to fit the new rudders they have pins with split rings  . This will make the rudders quick and easy to remove for when the boat is on the trailer .

 Sitting the boat back together to have a look at how we are going to mark out for the sections of the deck that will be painted in gloss and the non skid paint .

Sanding and painting

 

Sanding followed by more sanding then some sanding .

 The previous owner had painted the boat with some crappy house paint in various shades of green and creme . Getting the green paint off from the corners inside the beams took some serious effort .

 3 coats of Norglass Shipshape epoxy primer undercoat and 2 coats of Norglass Northane polyurethane gloss applied up to the deck . One coat on one side of the hull took 600ml of paint . The paint was overlapped so the keel will end up with 10 coats of paint .

                  Ah nice round edges should be allot less drag than those flat stainless plates

Reducing future failure points

 Although Simple and cheap i felt that The Rope lashings presented to many future failure points . So the holes were filled with thickened epoxy and then some fairing with quality epoxy bog .

 Also all the protective metal along the keel and on the skegs was worn out and i don't like the idea of holes below the waterline for the fasteners that held them on . The fix was to remove them all I found a little damage to the fiberglass along the keel but thankfully no rot . The whole keel was rounded off with more bog to a nice round shape then 3 layers of fiberglass tape from bow to stern to seal everything and provide strength and a reparable wear surface .

after getting the catamaran and trailer home on the flat bed tow truck (stuffed wheels) we proceeded to set up the boat on some copper logs in the back yard to get a better look at what we would be dealing with .

We found some rot in the lashing blocks and in the timber they are bolted to so we decided the best thing to do would be to rip out all those pieces and replace them with some new timber and thickened epoxy .

 

One of the worst sections had to be ground out and filled with fiberglass luckily the inner layer of ply in this location was in excellent condition so that was a fairly simple fix .

 

  

We decided the best approach after looking on the internet was to replace the standard lashing blocks for the side stays with through bolted stainless chain plates . A extra block of timber was added to accommodate the modification .