Well I managed to survive the night, no issues with cold but bloody hell! Mosquitoes (yes I slept with the window open) and my lanky legs put paid to a decent night’s sleep. As a result I was up at the crack of dawn. I set to work on the boat straight away. A 6am start. Being the considerate soul that I am I did’t use any power tools. I couldn’t anyway. Apparently when disposing of anti-foul the best way to go about it is to scrape.
Boat wanker klaxon
Anti-foul is a special paint that goes below the waterline. It’s supposed to stop barnacles and sea life growing on the hull of your boat. Not mine apparently. The dried up barnacles may as well have been donated to the British Museum as fossils.
I’ve not spent this much time ensuring a bottom was this clean since Booger’s early days. In fact this time around I paid far too much attention to the duties of cleaning. Not that I had the right tools for the job. Meet Mr Scraper.
Despite my lack of appropriate tools I persevered and managed to scrape the whole hull in no time at all.
Things on the hull were looking dire, the hole where the spinny thing goes needs resealing and the bit where the keel is supposed to go needs a lot of work. Not least of all getting it built up as part of the hull. My keel isn’t going back on the boat. That’ll make it 200kg lighter. The biggest issue of course are the 8 keel bolt holes which left unattended would sink the boat quicker than the Titanic.
I found something new on the hull, stumped at what it was I asked the Facebook group if anyone could enlighten me. Apparently this is a depth sounder. I assume it detects the depth of the water below you, but honestly I have no clue.
By the time I finished scraping it was late enough to fire up the power tools. I won’t bore you with mundane details so have some pictures instead:
As you can see I’ve left the paint on this time. Surprisingly, and very much unlike me I have learned from my mistakes. There was no “Fuck Karate Kid” moments and I took my time. The hull below the waterline was done with 80 grit and then 240 grit sandpaper. It’s so smooooooooth! If only I’d been more patient with the rest of the boat.
That’s not to say things went smoothly at all. Halfway through sanding I ran out of sandpaper for my sander. As always I had a plan, use the sandpaper left over from the sander that blew up a while back. The issue was that the older sander was smaller.
Essentially, the hull below the waterline is now ready for a coat of paint. I spent the rest of the day sanding the hull above the waterline, trying to undo the damage I did when I went gun-ho with my drill sander.
I had a few beers too. I really need to curb the drinking in the sun. Not all of those beers were consumed in one day.
Oh, I pussied out. I came home in the evening. Once again I was topless whilst sanding fibreglass and needed a proper shower.