Nothing but strippers!

[Eddie Offermann]

Yep. Nothing but chemical strippers, rags, solvent and sandpaper this weekend. We're front-loading the year with all the major work we want to do to try to give us as much great sailing time this summer as possible,

After doing some touchups and light sanding, we decided that the best way to make So Nice look So Great was to strip the bright work down to bare wood and work from there. It was daunting - looking at all the wood topside, it's a lot of ground to cover.

Used a couple strong chemical strippers to bubble off the old varnish and epoxy, took off much of the starboard wood to bare wood. There is still much to do - but this is going to put us in a much better place to get her looking gorgeous. There's only so much you can do touching up the existing varnish as we found out with the grab rails when we did them last year. They're beautiful and look brand new. Now it'll all match!

I continue to be excited about the cockpit remodel. About to start the dimensional drawings. Pretty sure we are adding a built in icebox, an ice maker, and a sink with a retractable faucet so it can double as a cockpit shower with the additional storage and modified seating.

Tired and sore now from the weekend's aggressive refinishing work. It's going to be wonderful though!

When we were prepping for the project last weekend, I pulled off the steel guards on the bow - the ones that keep the chain rode from slapping and grinding on the wood rail. Anybody know what those are called? I call them chain guards... Anyway, I took one to a local sheet metal shop and had replacements made in 18ga stainless (much thicker than what was there). They're gorgeous and will be more durable - the previous ones (original?) were pretty dinged up, especially the starboard one which is under the main anchor.