It's been a wonderful weekend for fitting out. The weather was fine and still, and on Saturday at least, really warm in the middle of the day. It was also a cheering weekend as we made significant progress - at last we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, as far as the winter work is concerned.
When we decided to do the Fastnet in 2007, we realised it would mean a lot of hard work to get the boat from cruising into racing trim - and the major effort would be the bottom finish.
Five years old this coming autumn, the boat was already collecting a fair accumulation of antifouling. There was the original bright white International Trilux applied when she was new, and a repeat layer put on for her original owner. When we first saw her, she was out of the water and it was evident that had fouled considerably.
When we bought her in spring 2005 we wanted to put Optima on, but being water-based it needs warm dry conditions for application. We only had a single weekend to antifoul before she was launched and it was cold and damp, so we slapped on two coats of International Micron - it wasn't our best paint job ever. Then last year we put on two coats of Optima.
International's Optima is the best antifouling we have found for stopping fouling. The problem is that it erodes unevenly, creating a “slow” surface (presumably why it is not recommended for racing boats).
We knew that to be competitive we would have to take the whole lot off and start again.
And we were up against a tight schedule. The boat was weighed and measured for her IRC rating on January 8th, and came out of the water two days later. The price of coming ashore late is that, as the yard is already full, the boat has to be placed in a “roadway” and so must be launched early, to give access to move other boats.
So there were just eight weeks to sort out the bottom, fortunately the only maintenance that needs to be done while the boat is out of the water. As we both work full time, that realistically means eight weekends. Being a perfectionist, Richard tackled the hull by hand with a tungsten carbide scraper. Essentially, it took him three complete weekends of hard, dirty work.
While he was doing that, I had to stay out of the way, but this weekend I was given the task of wet-and-drying the now bare glass, to provide a key for the priming coat. Having experienced first hand how much effort it takes to cover the whole hull (I know, serves us right for having such a big boat, as all the passers-by observed) I have even more admiration for Richard's efforts with the scraper.
Meanwhile he tackled the rudder and keel with International's Interstrip, which made the scraping rather easier. He also used Interstrip on the top edge of the boot top at the bow, where the antifoul was too hard for scraper alone to make an impression. We were impressed with the results.
The joy of the weekend came when, after much painstaking work, he was able to declare the rudder finished to his satisfaction, and set to work on it with primer and brush. At last to be putting something back, rather than taking more off, seemed a major psychological hurdle.
With four weekends left before the launch date, there's still a lot to do, but we're on schedule, touch wood. One weekend is taken up by the ISAF safety course we have to do as part of the qualification for the Fastnet, and we can probably expect at least one weekend to be blown out by winter weather. But as long as the weather is not too unkind, we will get there. The days are now noticeably longer, and the sun getting higher in the sky. Another weekend with conditions as benign as this one, and we could have the new hard racing antifoul on.
For more information visit www.yachtpaint.com
