Done!

Well, the job has taken over two months but the foredeck is completely finished. I had to hold off posting until I finished off the final coat of paint on the bowsprit tip, which got done day before yesterday. Here are the before and after shots followed by a couple more 'afters.' 

Big days on the bowsprit project

There have been some pretty significant milestones in the bowsprit project. Here's the latest.

After the chain locker fiberglass job, I gave everything a good coat of epoxy paint. Here's the inside of the locker with the back-up rode and head parts re-installed. The wires are for the windlass, which will be re-installed after the new samson posts are in.

The foredeck has had all the teak decks removed so it needs the same non-skid preparation that the rest of the teak free deck has. This is the deck after applying 3 coats of epoxy primer and being wet sanded smooth. The rest of the deck was primed with a white epoxy primer that went on much smoother, so only one coat of primer was needed. However the new primer was brushed on pretty rough, and more primer was needed so I could wet sand it smooth.

This picture shows two things, first the completed paint on the foredeck including non-skid. The grey shape in the middle is a fiberglass spacer I made to raise the new samson post to the height of the old deck. I removed about a 1/2" of teak deck so in order to keep the bowsprit in the original location I need to make up for the old teak. The base of the new samson post is 1/4" so the spacer is another 1/4". The blue tape covers holes in the deck to keep rain water out.

Here's the 'Big News'. This is the new stainless sampson post which will receive and support the bowsprit. Thanks to Phil for bringing the 2x4 stainless pipe down! This will bolt to the deck with 3ea 1/2" bolts and 3ea 3/8" bolts. The 3/8" bolt are not visible in this picture, but are in front and are countersunk to the same level as the base plate. I was only able to get 3/8" countersunk bolts, otherwise I'd have used 1/2".

This is a pretty hard picture to understand, but it's the underside of the bow pulpit. I figured since I was doing stainless work I'd modify the roller openings so they would feed the rode better. The stainless shop misunderstood my instructions and only modified the right side roller opening so you can get a before and after idea. They are picking up the pulpit tomorrow to complete the modification.  I wish I'd taken a before picture of the entire pulpit. Part of the work the stainless shop did was to polish the entire pulpit and repair any broken welds. Linda will appreciate the difference, I'm sure. Like I said, I wish I would have taken a before picture!

Here's a picture to show the bow fiberglass repair. I was worried that if I painted the repair the paint would stand out against the old gel-coat and make the repair obvious, but I was able to get the new paint to blend with the old gel-coat pretty well. The only problem is that the new paint is shiny, so I have to dull it up so it will match.

Here's the latest paint coat (5 of 7) on the bowsprit. It's pretty smooth, and very white.

Painting has got to be the slowest process in the world. I get to the boat about 0700 and by 0900 I'm done and can't do any more painting until the next day. Multiply that by 7 coats and things can really slow down. As a result I've been keeping busy after painting by doing small projects. Here's a picture of our new GPS, which replaced a GPS we originally bought in 1995. The old GPS worked ok, that is it gave us our position, but it started to have problems with the on/off button and as a result would turn itself off or on at random moments. That can be pretty annoying, so we decided to replace it. After a lot of searching I was able to find a unit that fit in the same space.

Today after painting I removed the stove and cleaned all the places you can't normally reach with the stove in place.

That's it for now. Soon I should be test fitting and installing the bowsprit. Then it will just be a matter of re-installing all the stuff I had to take off, like the windlass, bow pulpit, foot switches, holding tank pump out fitting and roller furling. The end (of this project) is in sight!

John

Zenith day

Being just below the tropic of cancer, Mazatlan has its 'Zenith Day' right around the summer solstice. That's the day that the sun, at noon, will be exactly overhead. I was out the other day and was able to take a picture of the moment when the sun was pretty close to being directly overhead. The picture would probably have been more impressive if it were taken in a country were the lamp posts are installed plumb and square, but you get the idea. The inset is a close up of the shadow from the top of the light.

For what it's worth, there are actually two 'Zenith Days', one before the solstice and another after as the sun has crept to its highest point in the sky and then returns south. But the difference in the sun's angle is pretty small here in Mazatlan. By the way, don't expect to learn more by looking up 'Zenith Day' on the internet. I made it up :-)