...is it really six years later?

[Jasper & Karen]

Spring 2020 and we're still working on fibreglass...what a terrible correspondent I've been!  Here's what's happened since last I updated you all.

We replaced all the fibreglass on the cabin, deckhouse and most of the decks--some of it was still intact, at least!  In the process, we had to replace a few sections of the deck, a bit of Cleopatra's couch and some of the gunwales that had just rotted right out.  Elsewhere, liberal use was made of products like Rot-Fix, ScuptWood and buckets and buckets of fairing compound. The majority of that work was finished in 2016.

We hauled again in 2018 for another go at it, expecting to be out a couple of weeks to deal with rusting fasteners that were bleeding through the hull.  The work went well and we were just replacing the rub rails when Jasper put his hand clear through the hull while trying to drill a hole! I turned out that about 3' of the hull portside aft was completely rotten, as well as one of the ribs. Weeks became months as we rebuilt from the inside out. We worked like dogs to get it done in time for our annual marine debris cleanup on northwest Vancouver Island, but we made it!  The boatyard offered me a job on their crew as we were splashing back in the water--I thought it was a joke but they were serious! Viajador was looking pretty good by that time:

And she still leaked.

Jasper has a touching, but misplaced, faith in the ability of fibreglass to seal itself to wood and prevent water intrusion.  He resisted caulking the new fibreglass under the cap rail and around the portlights for a full year and only gave in because he figured it would be faster and easier to do the caulking than to listen to me telling him we had to do it. Ditto the portlights and windshield--he insisted on leaving them in place and just placing the fibreglass up to the rubber moldings--not smart. They're mostly the source of the remaining leaks.  He's working on a small portlight right now and I'm hoping that once he's done and realizes he can do it, we'll take on the rest of them!

Any words of advice on getting those rubber moldings back into place would be appreciated!

My current job is repairing the cockpit combings, which cracked at the deck line years ago and I repaired once without using fibreglass, back when I thought I should listen to Jasper about how water can't get behind fibreglass if it's still stuck to the wood.  He's made new mahogany caps for the combings, which I should be ready to install in a few days if the weather will only hold long enough for me to get the new fibreglass on there!  I'm really looking forward to having that done, as I can't really enjoy kicking back on Cleopatra's Couch while looking at work I know needs doing.

Next up, I have to remove all of the paint we put on once the fibreglassing was complete.  I don't really know what happened, as we cleaned the surfaces as directed with acetone before painting and we're well acquainted with how to apply Brightside paint--we've done the whole boat twice before with no problems.  But this time, within a week of painting, I started to notice tiny blisters rising in the finish. They broke off, predictably, leaving the entire surface pock-marked and chalky. The only cause I can imagine for this is the smoke in the air the year we painted: wildfires were burning out of control in BC and the air was orange.I know smoke particles are sticky devils and I'm guessing some stuck to the surface during the paint job. The damage is only on the horizontal surfaces, which tends to make me think it was something settling on them, at any rate.

Whatever the cause, the remedy is clear:  that paint's got to come off.  I found a soy-based stripper that is safe to use on fibreglass, that we used to remove the many layers of paint on the fibreglass we didn't replace--hoping I can still locate it b/c sanding off all of that paint would take half a lifetime! 

Lest you think we do nothing but work on the boat, every year we've found time to take the trip to Vancouver Island's northwest coast, to support a team of volunteers cleaning up the water-access-only beaches.  Here's our crew enjoying a moonlit campfire and a little music after a long day's work at Sea Otter Cove. Viajador is barely visible, riding on a can buoy immediately below the peak of the highest hill--from there, we fed and watered this crew of a dozen hardy souls and kept a bear-proof campsite in between times.

...and just one of the dozen or so spectacular beaches we've cleaned up every year since 2014: