Okay, I’m “borrowing” this above clip from Star Trek, but only to make fun of myself, the rest of OAR Northwest and our “crew”. The clocks ticking, and we’re attempting to get done with the refurb by early March, giving us some time to test out all the equipment and systems in a more controlled environment (Land, Lake Union, Lake Washington, Elliot Bay in Seattle) before we head off around Vancouver in April. It won’t take a miracle, just some persistence. Acting like Captain Kirk’s breathing down our necks to get the ship fixed up in order to search the galaxy for attractive green alien women…that’s all the motivation I need. What do you expect from a Trekker (not Trekkie…)?
Picking up where we left off last time, the boat’s had been stripped down of gear, and so the next task was to begin sanding it down to the primer. Note I had no experience doing this before with a fiberglass/composite boat, so I was a bit apprehensive to immediately go to town on the boat without a little instruction first by the resident geniuses in the Ballard Canal Boat Yard. Jordan did a bit of this in 2006 when the boat was first painted. It’s like driving a nail into a wall; you’ve got to tap it in place first before you start wacking away with any gusto.
Larry Schildwachter (the Emerald Harbor Marine owner, our buddy, and Master Overlord – we’ll get to him in detail in a future post) and Doug Lambeth (owner of Pacific Fiberglass – ditto, and I love his motto – “doing it right, the first time”) gave us some instructions on how to go about work.
Rule 1: Even on a round surface, ensure that you are laying the sander flat against said surface. You don’t want to be digging down to the fiberglass with the edge of the sander. Don’t try to dig out paint in an indented area.
Rule 2: Make long, broad stokes instead of short ones. You want to take off the paint as evenly as possible down to the primer, and not create spots of exposed fiberglass, especially when you invariably come back to this spot on accident. Opening these spots up on the outside of the hull would be … counterproductive and might require patch work.
Rule 3: Don’t grind down the edges of the hull. Sand that by hand (well, at least for us noobs)
Rule 4: Ensure that you don’t blow paint particles into the nearby Fred Meyer parking lot by vacuuming the exhaust and placing tarps on the ground to protect from leakage.
Rule 5: Dress in bio-hazard looking Tyvek suits with ear and breathing protection.
Check out the time lapse of the beginning of our work.
Doing this over several days made my hands shake.
Again, more to come in the following posts, including some big thanks you hits and introductions to more of the boat yard’s personnel.