Introducing the new crew member

After a tedious long selection we have decided to go with Heather Beige as our sumbrella collor.  She's brown with a spec of black and white looks very sexy when the sun shines on her.  All of our canvas will be this colour and we think this combination will work really well.
We are excited to have Heather shielding the sun and the salt water from our faces.  We will post pictures once the project is finalized.

                                       
                                                         The sexy Heather Beige

Work in progress

The work continues going strong despite the extremely hot temperatures.  It’s been around 40C for the last two weeks and it’s very challenging working under this heat.  Monika has arrived and we are both working hard to get as many projects as we can before relauching in early December.  We managed to strip the entire deck from it’s hardware, we are epoxing all the holes, redrilling and rebeding all the hardware.  But before we can do that we will paint the deck.  

Monika also took the cabin sole as a project and we stripped the entire varnish of the sole and now have sanded to 320 grit.  We will use Cetol for the sole (up to 8 coats).  

We have also decided to redo the entire bright work on the boat (outside wood) we are now well underway to finishing up stripping and sanding the wood.  We will be ready to apply epifanes varnish the outside wood, something along 8-10 coats.  It’s a long tedious process but it will look very sharp when all done.  We can only apply one coat a day and they have to be wet sanded in between coats so as you can see 8-10 coats will take some time.  

We have decided to redo the entire canvas on the boat (dodger, bimini, sail cover).  Unfortunately the canvas is a job that we will not be able to do on our own and had to hire a company here in Trinidad do undertake the job for us.  We are also redoing most of stainless steel work.  This will include solid stainless bars as our lifelines, a new bimini with a solar panel bracket mount on top of it and reworking of our wind generator mounting bracket and location.   This work is also being done by a local Trini contractor and we should have the stainless and canvas done with in three weeks.  

The bottom have now been stripped of it’s 10 coats of antifouling, this job needed to be done as the antifouling was peeling from the bottom.  We will apply two coats of epoxy primer and than three coats of fresh new antifouling paint.  

                                       
                                          Bottom scrapped and ready for primer and antifoul
                           

                                                The tedious process of varnish scrapping

                                      Deck with most of it's hardware off and wood stripped

                                                                          Wood masked off ready for sealer 

The refit

I managed to arrived in Trinidad on Wednesday at around 02:00 after a full day and a half from my previous scheduled time.  You might ask, did I sail over here? Why so slow? Well, hurricane Sandy and a mechanical problem with the Planes spoiled the trip.
The only job I had previously arranged to get done while the boat was on the hard and I was away working, did get it done and it looks really sharp.  Allen a local Trini painter, painted the hull, raised the water line by 6 inches an did a very good job.  I ended up using awlgrip 2000, a little more expensive but the final result is impressive.  It's nice to have different people coming by and asking what type of boat this is, the year.  Rodeo is loving the attention.
I'm now slowly working away on a few other projects and I'll try and post here what I end up doing while being here in Trinidad.