Category Archives: Repairs

Varnish, Varnish, Varnish

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Varnish is a very repetitive process and it requires a LOT of patience which I have very little of.  These projects try my very last bit of sanity, but I got it all done over several weeks.  Over the years, we have put oil and stain on our exterior teak wood.  We have teak on our 2 cockpit hatches, 6 steps on the sugar scoops, hand rails along the cabin top, rails on all 4 sides of the bimini, 2 princess seats, and 8 pieces in the cockpit.  Lots of teak.   If you are a cruiser, you will notice I did not mention the teak toe rail as there is no way in he!! I will touch those.

Matt has wanted to varnish the wood for a long time and every time I go to stain or oil any of the teak he complains.  So, I finally agree to try my hand at varnishing.

Varnish / Awl Wood

We have talked about varnishing some of our teak pieces for years.  But varnishing is time consuming and takes a lot of patience (which I don’t have).  Now that we are in the yard and we removed the bimini hand rail and the cabin top hand rails we’ve decided it was time to give it a whirl.

Project 1 of 3 Varnishing  Projects are the (2) hand rails that run along our cabin top (about 12′ or 3.5m), (2) aft bimini rails and a flag pole.

Sanding, Sanding, and More Sanding

The first step is sanding several times with 80 grit then sanding several more times until all of the old stain and groves are gone.  Then you follow it up with more sanding using 120 grit sand paper which smoothes the surface further.   

Removal of All Dust Particles 

Then I wipe everything down with MEK (some heavy duty nasty stuff to remove the dust particles).

Primer

Next step I apply Awl Grip / Awl Wood Primer.  The yard informed me that I should be using a new bucket and brush for each step and each coat, so I did (seems wasteful). 

The primer goes on smoothly and turns the wood a rich, beautiful color.  This is a clear primer so we were surprised at how dark it made the wood.  Can you see the long cabin hand rails hanging from the metal boat support?

Applying Awlwood Gloss

Once the primer was dry (24hrs) I applied the first coat of Awlwood gloss.  You can either apply one coat each 24hrs and then sand down, apply MEK, then apply 2nd coat or you can try multi coating in a single day.  Guess which one I tried — multi-coating (lack of patience, remember).  I was only able to apply 2 coats in the first day.  So, the next day I had to hand sand each piece with 320 grit paper before starting the next 3 coats.

Once these dry for 24 hours I sanded them all again with 600 grit paper and put on the final 6th coat.

Project 2: More Varnishing

I also varnished the (2) cockpit handholds, two teak hatch frames, and the teak on both helm seats.  There were years of layers of stain on these pieces of wood.  I would do a light sanding before staining, but they had not been taken down to the raw wood in ages.

And now they are beautiful and shiny.  For some reason the wood looks more red than it is in realy life.  The wood color is more like the lower left photo.

You’ve Got to Be Kidding?

One day after Matt installed our beautiful new varnished hand rails along the cabin top, I stop to take a photo and notice something horrible!  The teak around the sides and front of the bimini are simply awful looking with old stain.  And on top of that the small teak rail along the cabin top (just below it) looked crappy too.  And since I had the varnish out again, we decided to do the two princess seats and the teak backing to our wench handle holders.  Great, varnish project #3!  Keep in mind it started out with one piece and now has blossomed into 18 pieces!

The teak rail along the bimini top can’t be removed (unlike the aft portion of the rail) so it makes it very difficult to sand.  Most of it has to be done by hand.  This is the same case for the rail along the cabin top.  This project has truly destroyed my hands, nails, and back!  I am upside down a lot trying to get the pieces that are seen from the cockpit.  

I was so irritated that I started sanding without taking any before photos, but trust me the wood needed either stain or varnish.

Sanding

Man oh man this was difficult to sand these pieces.  Most of the trim was near our non-skid (which really hurts the hands when you hit it), gelcoat which scratches easily from the sand paper, a metal rail (painful on the hands) and or screws, bolts, knobs.  You can see from the top photo that the bimini rail and the small rail below it had to be varnished to match the beautiful hand rails along the cabin top.

The two princess seats really need new teak but it is not in the cards yet.  Maybe when we get to Indonesia.  So, we sand down the old stain and do our best to make these seats look better.  Here is the raw wood.

Back to the Process

A good swipe of MEK is applied to remove all dust particles and anything that might muck up the varnish.  Primer is applied and then 24hrs later the varnish process begins.  Awlgrip’s product Awlwood allows you to either multi-coat or apply one coat every 24hrs with a sanding in between coats.  I couldn’t possibly sand 6 more times. So I decided to try multi-coating again which only requires 2 more sanding sessions.

The end product came out nice, not my favorite and certainly not my best work, but it will do for now.  I am not a varnish person. I don’t like doing it and I am not a fan of the end result.  But Matt likes it so there is that.  Just not sure who will redo all of this in 5 years when it starts to look ratty???

The front section that is flat was fairly easy to do despite the non-skid and gel coat issues.  But the insde was tricky with the rails, the ledges, the uneven surfaces.  You see this from the inside of the cockpit (bottom right photo).  This kept getting loads of bubbles which required more sanding.  Truly a beastly job.

After what seemed like months of sanding and varnishing (it reality it was weeks), everything has been varnished (except the toe rails).  

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog occured in early December while we were on the hard in Norsand Boatyard.  Don’t miss out on some of the beastly projects we got completed in the yard in our last blog post.

Beastly Boat Projects Part II

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We conquer lots of boat projects while we are in the yard at Norsand Boat yard.  Some we hire contractors and some we do ourselves.  Be sure to read Beastly Boat Projects Part I.   Since we had so many boat projects to complete we had to break it up into two blog posts.  Here is Part II.

Heaters

Did you know that Sugar Shack came equipped with heaters?  We don’t have a generator or AC, but we do have heaters.  The problem is that they stopped working. Starboard never really worked and port gave out last season while we were in NZ.  This is our old heating component inside the engine room.  

We had (2) new heating systems sent to us while we were in Fiji and they needed to be installed now that we are in chilly NZ (even though it is summer time we are cold).

We purchased (2) Eberspacher Hydronic M-II systems that are 12voilt, D10W, 86W from Heatso in the US.  Matt installed them and they are a thing of beauty!  Wow what a difference they make inside.  Warm and dry.  Our new heating component and dehumidifier!  We will be going to some countries with high humidity and these units will come in very handy!

The Boat projects continue and both Matt and I are working hard along side our contractors.

The Beastly Anchor Chain

I love our 10mm stainless steel anchor chain.  It is long, shiny, self folding and really strong!  We mark our chain every 10m with a coated webbing from strapworks.com.  The straps that were in the chain were old, ratty looking, and difficult to see from the deck so I wanted to replace them.  I drop all 100m (over 300′) onto the ground and prepare it for cleaning and new straps.

It took several tools to extract the old webbing from each link and a good set of needle nose pliers to help me pull the new stiff webbing through each link.  Then I used ospho to clean up the chain and she looked like new!

Dinghy Repair

We loved our Avon dinghy, but the pontoons were dead and needed to be replaced.  We decided to buy a Highfield 3.6 CL which we regretted. In retrospect, we should have just replaced our pontoons and kept our last dinghy as they just don’t make them that good anymore.

Our dinghy was used for a month before the non-skid (EVA) started coming up.  We were so mad.  We had lots of communications with All Marine the company that sold us the dinghy and the manufacturer.  In the end, after much negotiating and me being a brat, the manufacturer agreed to replace the non-skid at no charge.  New Zealand has a Consumer Guarantee Act which guarantees products have to be replaced or repaired within one year of purchase. I love it!  This is regardless of the actual manufacturer guarantee.  So, they repaired it at no cost to us after I reminded them of this act!

Inverter Charger 12v

Being in New Zealand made us realize that we needed a 220 inverter charger.  We have a 110v inverter charger and we have a 220 charger but it does not invert.  So, we bring our friend Matthew Duckett from Cleigh Ltd. to help Matt install it.

New Mirrors 

This is not one of the “beastly” boat projects but it drove me to beastly states every morning I looked into the mirror.  Our medicine cabinet has pretty damaged mirrors and old rusty hinges.  They are double sided which is super cool but evidently really expensive to replace. So we decide to go with single sided mirrors with a mirror vinyl finish for the inside.

I know it is a small thing but I just love the new mirrors.  We hope to find the hinges in stainless steel as I am not a fan of the mat black, but other than that they are much better.

 

After weeks of being on the hard and working on dozens of beastly boat projects, here are a few photos of sunset on the hard.

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog post occured during our stay a Norsand Boatyard, 7 Nov-22 Dec. Stay tuned out if we are getting kicked out of New Zealand.  Coming up next we share our visa issues.

Beastly Boat Projects: Part I

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There are so many things we do on the boat that are so very dreadful and darn right beastly!  Lucky for us, we are on the hard at Norsand and can employ their team to more effeciently conquer some of these boat projects for us.

Living on the Hard

Many cruisers rent an apartment when their boat is on the hard because frankly it is irritating to be on the hard while living onboard.  Why do you ask?  Well, first, we have no running water.  Which means no sinks, toilets, or showers.  Lucky for us we are fairly close to the bathrooms but still, in the middle of the night, I have to layer the warm clothing (as it get’s down to 11c), go outside, climb down my stairs, walk to the bathroom, and return.  Then I am wide awake for hours.  Brushing your teeth, or washing your hands, or doing the dishes take on a totally different meaning when you have to carry them downstairs, outside, and to the public sinks.

Now, let me shine some light on my craziness.  Yes, the above is true.  However, I only have to go down 5 steps where my neighbor has to go down 18 steps!  I have no right to complain.

Saildrive Maintenance and Repair

The boat projects begin.  We engaged Whangarei Marine (also known as Ray Roberts) to help us do some general maintenance on our saildrives.  I scheduled them for the day after we were hauled out but I did not expect to still be on the trailer when they arrived.  They made the best of it.  Taylor and Damon showed up and expertly removed the props, zincs, and drained the oil.

Then they had to move our engine forward in order to pull the saildrive out.  Only to have to repeat the process on the other side.

Plans Always Change…

We originally started out with replacing the bellows, clamping rings, and seal kits.  Then after we removed the saildrives we noticed our damper plates were a little worse for the wear (still functional, but new would be better).  Unfortunately, Volvo no longer sells parts for our 23 year old engines and there were no second hand damper plates.  So, we added a spacer to get more time out of the splines.  Matt thinks we added 4-5 years before we might need to think about repowering the boat (new engines and saildrives).  Gesh, this was a super expensive boat project!

Once the saildrives are installed we have to wait for the coppercoat to be applied before we install the boot that goes around the sail drive.  The rubber piece is glued with 5200 then Matt installs the fiberglass with screws.  We decided to cover these small pieces with an anti-foul wrap instead of our coppercoat.  This is a relatively new technology. It literally is a wrap that is meant to protect the bottom of your boat.

Top left shows the bare hull with the rubber boot down toward the bottom hanging losely.  The rubber boot is glued on first.  Then we glued (5200) the fiberglass boot (upper right photo) which has the new antifoul wrap on.  Once the fiberglass is set, the wrap company came back and added the plack paint around the edges and frankly made a huge mess of the entire project.  But it is on the bottom of the boat so we are letting it go.

An Experiment

Not a boat project, but a fun experiement.  In one area we have coppercoat (on the hull), prop speed (saildrives and props), Vivid barrier antifoul paint (rudder casing) and a new antifoul vinyl wrap (on the sail drive boots).  We are testing to see which of the 4 antifoul uses do better.  We both are betting on the antifoul vinyl wrap being the first to go.

Circle (upper left pic) is Vivid antifoul paint.  Lower right pic is the antifoul vinyl wrap.  Upper right shows you the coppercoat (antifoul on the hulls), vinyl wrap (black on the sail drive boot) and coppercoat on the saildrive and props.

Caulking the Deck and Beyond

There is a sealent that runs along the deck and the hull all around the entire boat.  It was looking super ratty and some areas had small leaks.  We tried to get a small area repaired in Raitea but they did not do a really great job so we decided to replace the entire thing all around the boat.  This is one of the boat projects we did not want to conquer on our own.

Josh is assigned to this lovely, dirty boat project.  First he has to carefully dig the old sealent out between the wood toe rail and the deck.  You can see it looks clumpy in some areas which is not only ugly but uneffective.  This has been a boat project we wanted to tackle for some time, but never had the time and dry weather for long enough to do it.

This is an area where he picked out the old sealent and then in the lower photo replaced it with fresh product.

Here is another area that was bad, it is the port sugar scoop by our swim ladder.

A Busy Caulker

Since we have such a talented “caulker” we asked Josh to seal several other areas:

  • Starboard large window (Int/Ext) / hatch that had a small leak
  • Starboard & Port helm seats and helm stations
  • Both davits at the boat attachment point
  • Forward and aft bimini poles (above the cockpit)
  • Inside around the new ceiling panels we installed last season in each of the 3 cabins, both heads, and salon.
  • Around the entire bimini rail, all four sides
  • Let’s just say that we “caulked” the majority of the boat inside and out

I am not sure Josh wants to do more caulking boat projects from us again, but it was great fun having him around for most of our time in Norsand!

Teak Bimini Rail

The teak bimini rail was falling off.  I am sure part of the reason it came loose was because it is old, but also because Matt steps on it when he works on the sail.  In order to properly repair it we had to completely remove it (carefully so it doesn’t break).  The rail is attached to the bimini which is made of honeycomb (strong and light).  Because the wood is old and fragile, Matt decides to take on this boat project by removing it himself.  Now the yard can fill and prepare the board to be re-installed.  Please note that our bimini rail did not look like the photos below. I failed to take a before photo of the wood so you get a middle photo of half of it torn out. 

Matt and Ben tackled the honeycomb part of this boat project.  Matt cleaned it out and prepared it for filling and then Ben filled it with sealant. We wanted to fill it to ensure the wood would hold more securly.  While the boys were working on the bimini, I worked on the wood. The end product looks amazing!

Bathroom Ceiling

This should be the last ceiling job that we do for a long time!  The master bathroom had 5 panels that were made of fiberglass and covered in paint.  The problem was the humidity over the years caused the paint to chip and it looked horrible.  The only way to properly repair the panels was to remove them, sand and repaint them.   The problem with this boat project was that they were solidly in place, glued with 5200 and tons of caulking.  It was beastly!

Of course, once you remove the panels you have to remove all of the awful glue, silicone, and residue — making this a truly beastly boat project.  We bring a day laborer, Kenan to help me for one day and I finish up on day 2.  Smooth as a baby’s butt!

Josh installed the new ceiling panels with VHB tape and then spent a few days caulking around every single panel!

Once he was done the master head looked spectacular!  I am so happy with the repaired ceiling.

Boat Projects To Be Continued…

We had so many beastly boat projects that it requires 2 blog posts!  So stay tuned for our next post as we install new heaters and a new 220v inverter/charger, we install new anchor markers and clean up our 100m of stainless steel chain, varnish tons of teak and install new mirrors.

What the cockpit looks like during project mode….ugh!

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog post occured during  7 Nov. – 22 Dec.  We repair several gel coat areas in our last blog – did you catch it?