Boating Season Is Almost Here!

Mother Nature has been kind to us here in southern Ontario because we have experienced the warmest spring in years. The ice has been out of the bay for a while now which meant any work the marina needed to do to get the docks ready could be done sooner ensuring that we could be in the water sooner.

Donald and I took a quick trip up to Wiarton in March to meet with Gerry from Canadian Yacht Tops so that he could digitally template the floor of the cockpit for carpet. Here is the drawing of the floor layout.

While we were there we fit the transom caps so that I could start the process of fiberglass and gelcoat back in our shop.

It was a beautiful day and it was easy to imagine us back in our slip again.

Here are a few shots I got from in their shop. If you told me a few years ago that I would be driving for 2 hours … in winter… just to see a boat for an hour I would have thought you were crazy. I think that we have all have things we are crazy about.

Back in our shop I got working on the transom caps. The first thing I had to do was make the 4 pieces of plywood into 2. This way the caps will be continuous. I didn’t want any joints.

Once I had them together I edged them with fiberglass.

I rolled the edges with resin first and then applied strips of fiberglass.

I left that to cure overnight and then trimmed off the excess once again discovering my issues with working with fiberglass. This product is great but I will be glad when I am done using it.

I’m not sure if it is the resin or the glass but this stuff is hard on the skin. I wore proper gloves but it still seems to get through.

Once I had both faces sanded flush I turned them over and sealed the backside with resin. After that cured I started applying the backer. I wanted these to stand off from the top of the transom to create a reveal. Using a 3/8″ sheet of a water proof MDF called Exteria I copied the top caps and then cut these copies down by 3/8″ on all sides so that they were slightly smaller.

I then glued and clamped the pieces and left them overnight for the adhesive to cure.

It was time to move back into the spray room to glass the tops. As much as these top caps were pretty solid gelcoat doesn’t like plywood that can move too much. By glassing the tops the fairing compound, and then the gelcoat, would have a very stable substrate to adhere to.

This is what I ended up with.

I then allowed this to fully cure and then trimmed off the excess glass ending up with this …

Now we come to the part I was really dreading. Once again I suited up and wore the appropriate mask and started sanding.

I was able to get the edges and tops fairly smooth and even. It didn’t have to be perfect because the next step was adding this stuff ….

… to resin to come up with this …

I covered the edges and top with a generous amount of fairing compound ….

… and here is the stage they are at now.

Now I get to do more sanding. My life is complete.

I ordered a gallon of gelcoat from the marina to match the colour they are using. I’m hoping to get that in the next week or so.

What else can I talk about????

I bought a few of these for the engine room.

I went through a short phase of watching boat fires on Youtube. It probably wasn’t the best use of my time but I became obsessed with them. Thankfully I am over that now but I wanted to fully protect our boat. The wiring is all new and I will have the appropriate number of fire extinguishers on board but it seems that a lot of fires start when people aren’t on board.

Here is a link to videos of these fireball suppression balls in action. This is from Powerboat Television.

Apparently they are good for 5 years. Well worth the investment I think.

Another thing that still has to be done is the installation of the new wood strips for the windlass. Here is what it looked like before.

…. and here it is now.

I wanted to maintain a bit of the original look so Donald made up these to match the original wood slats. The 2nd photo shows them with a coat of conditioner. This may end up needing regular maintenance but they will match the lounge chairs.

The main purpose of these slats is to give the windlass something to sit on I guess…

Finally … no blog post would be complete without including the dynamic duo (yes … I have used that term earlier in this blog) known as Tom and Chris. They came for a shortened boat day and safely kept their distance. Their job this time was to help clean and buff the black rubber rub rails. I had no idea how to bring these back to life so we did the best we could.

These have to be reinstalled before our boat sees the water so that will have to be in the next few weeks.

Well that’s it for now. Lots of photos for those of you who find my posts are too long … not mentioning any names Kevin but I wanted to do this to get back into the blogging zone.

I hope to be able to update the blog again in a few weeks. In May I also plan on starting to upload videos to Youtube for anyone who might be interested.

Until then stay safe and stay healthy.