boat projects are underway...... from P

Senara has been "on the hard" since late January. It has been unusually blustery - grit from a nearby construction site combined with particles of sanded bottom paint has been blowing and cutting its way into every crevice in the boat. When you slide open the hatch it screams with grit grinding in the tracks. I keep wondering if she will ever be the same after putting up with the indignities of sitting on blocks for months getting crapped on by pigeons .. and all that dirt!

P on the sander.....

The progress so far: Her bottom has been sanded, 22 blisters have been ground out of the hull and re-filled with west-system epoxy, her engine has been pulled out (we are replacing it with a new one!), shaft has been pulled and the hull has been polished.

This is the hole where the engine used to be. I am a little worried.

Then there was the real time consuming project - I pulled off the stainless steel rub-rails and added a 1 inch milled rub rail all the way around. This new rub rail is made of ipe' (eepay), an extremely hard imported wood. Capt. Fred was in charge of this project. This stuff is like iron; much harder than teak. We seated the stainless rail back on the ipe' to form a good hard rub rail that sits out away from the hull about 1.25 inches. Maybe now I won't ding up the hull so badly when I "utilize the pilings" when backing into a tight slip. While the old rail was off, we ground out the old hull-to-deck joint and refilled it with epoxy. We have made progress, but I still feel like we are in the egg breaking stage. Looking forward to the omelette.... will we ever be finished?

Capt. Fred, master of epoxy!

Fred's new business is OK Marine Services

Suffolk, VA. Reach him at 757-749-5905.

I highly recommend him.

Still to go - Paint the bottom, install new engine, re-install shaft, build cabinets, refinish inside teak, rebuild the lazy jacks, design and assemble an emergency tiller system, design and build a dinghy motor mount in the locker, and then figure out how to best utilize all the nooks and crannies for storage for a year-long cruise. This is big fun.