I Love It When A Plan Comes Together!

My brother Donald has something in common with the great American actor George Peppard who played John “Hannibal” Smith on the 1980’s TV show The A-Team. For a while now his favourite saying has been …

… and I have been finding myself saying it as well.

It’s actually quite appropriate for this point in the renovation of our boat. We have been working on a lot of little things over the winter with a general target date of spring and it looks like those little projects are going to be wrapping up at the same time.

Here is what has been happening over the last 3 weeks.

First of all the renovation power couple paid us another visit. Now that the repairs to the gunwale were complete it was time to get the rub rail re-installed. So it was Tom and Chris to the rescue.

Even though all three of us have had our first shots we made sure we kept our distance.

For some reason from the time I very carefully labelled the pieces when we took them off way back in the fall of 2019 to now the labelling seemed to have changed. It took us a while to get things sorted out but we were finally able to get 90% of the rub rail on. I can’t seem to find the other 10%.

I am missing a piece that is about 12′ long on the starboard side. It’s not like it’s in some drawer somewhere so I am hoping it shows up in the next week or so.

In the foreground you can see my headliner work bench. I was finally able to install the panels that I covered back in the winter.

Realistically the headliner will take us the rest of the summer to complete and will be installed a few pieces at a time. I am hoping to be working on the panels for the cockpit as well at the same time.

Speaking of the cockpit Tom and Chris were able to sand all of the areas that will be exposed once the new carpet and wall panels are in. There won’t be much showing in the end but it was great to get things cleaned up. I will do a final sanding with 800 before I buff it a bit. I can do that in sections as I put the wall panels in so … done by September??

It was great to see the years of weathering disappear in seconds. Got to love gelcoat!

Donald quickly made up a piece that I fitted into the area above the vanity. This is to be a fixed panel for a mirror and lights.

I’m hoping to have this installed and wired up soon.

We made up a small piece of Ipe to follow the shape of the windlass and will have to get everything installed soon. I have contacted an electrician to come and look after configuring the inverter/charger to the lithium battery and he will power up the windlass when he is on the boat.

In the photo you can see the black rubber gasket/template for the windlass.

This has nothing to do with the boat but on my way up to Wiarton I saw this in Harriston, Ontario and thought it was cool enough to stop and take a photo of.

I went up the day before Mother’s day and it was gone when I drove back. Pretty great!

Last fall I installed the hinges for the shower doors thinking that I was actually going to get them finished … last fall! That didn’t quite work out.

I did make a template of the door and so was able to use that to make up the pieces that I needed. I used 3/8″ clear acrylic and was going to apply a film to it so that it had a mat finish. Fairly translucent. I found out that because of off gassing from the acrylic they don’t recommend this. So I tried an experiment. I started with 180 grit sand paper and finished with 320 …

… and ended up with this …

I added the bifold hardware …

I think it actually turned out great and the good thing is, if they get scratched, I can take them back to the shop in the fall and sand them again.

Oh yeah … we settled on the font size for the lettering on the transom.

My niece Brittany is making the vinyl letters for us and should have them on in early June.

I started rewiring the helm switches. What a dog’s breakfast it is. I did label everything as I removed them in the fall (hoping it turns out better than the rub rail) and I went from this …

… to this.

Still a lot more to do. The electrician who originally did the work will be coming to Wiarton on May 25th to try to figure out why the electronics were shorting out last year.

I have been working on a small side boat project. We like to play Cribbage and so I thought I would make our own board.

This is a scale size of our boat.

I think I counted 10 times to make sure I had the correct number of holes. The holes you see are just punched out. Now I have to get the drill press set up to finish them off. This is made from layers of solid cherry.

On the bottom I drilled out stepped holes for the pegs and then finished it with black epoxy. I now have to make a small round cover and will use magnets to keep it in place.

Now would be a good time for you to go get some refreshments. There is a lot more.

Having fitted the new transom door last time …

… I now started finishing it. The first step is to cover it with fiberglass. I did the edges first …

…. and the next day after removing the excess glass I finished the one side …

… and tomorrow night I will finish the other side. Once I am done with glassing it I will sand it smooth and apply the fairing compound and then the gelcoat and then the sanding … always the sanding. There are a lot of steps to doing this.

What else???

Of course. The transom caps.

Remember earlier in this post when I mentioned the sanding??

There is a lot of sanding!!!!!!

Once I got the fairing compound nice and smooth I was able to start the gelcoat. The first two coats were brushed on. I should have sprayed them.

I started on the back of the caps to paint the reveals first.

A few days later I brushed on the first coat on the top.

And then a few days later I brushed the second coat.

Then I got smart.

Third coat sprayed.

And then final coat sprayed. At least I hope it’s the final coat. I ran out of gelcoat.

Guess what the next step is? Yup. Sanding. Starting with 320 tomorrow night and working up to 2000. I will wait to buff it on site. I plan to glue and screw these down from the top and fill the countersunk holes with gelcoat. They should pretty well disappear. They should.

And finally…

Nelson, our favourite upholsterer, delivered the cushions for the bow lounge chairs and for the cockpit storage seating at the transom. We are very happy with how they turned out.

I will let the photos speak for themselves …

I made a removable bracket for the incline. It will fit nicely in the area under the headrest. I couldn’t come up with a workable solution for having the back rest on a fixed bracket so I went with the simplest solution for now. I can always add an adjustable one later.

I stuck Dennis inside to help fasten the cushions to the brackets. He did it with a smile.

Once we have the unit installed we will make templates for the fixed part of the seat.

When the cushions are in the open position they should … I mean will … clear the transom.

That’s it for now. The title of this post says it all. Now if we can just be allowed to go to our boat ….

June 2nd is apparently when our restrictions will be lifted. Hopefully we are in a position for that to happen.

Until next time.