TCBing

The countdown has started. With only 8 weeks of school left and warmer weather on its way, it's time to get busy. I still have a huge list of projects, and some major ones at that: reballasting the boat, building the quarter berths and bulkheads, and gluing the hull and deck back together... I might be sailing by next year.

Over spring break I was able to get a bunch of projects finished and now I'm back to weekends. This is obviously not idea given that I am a 3-5 hour drive to my boat.

Enough complaining back to the project:

I pulled the deck out and tossed her into the snow.

She looked very sad just sitting there, but I needed to clear out some space so I could access all sides of the hull.

My plan was to sand off the the layers of bottom paint applied by the previous owners.

Deciding what to use for bottom paint was no easy decision. I read and read and contemplated the merits of all the product out there.

The facts came down to: 1. I care about the environment (I am a biology teacher after all), 2. this is a trailerable sailboat, and 3. I don't mind jumping into the water and scrubbing the bottom.

 

At the beginning.

Too many hours latter - time to switch projects.

The motor mount has been rebuilt so now it needs a mounting block for the motor. I looked around the woodshop and found an old rough chunk of oak... good enough.

Ok, enough of that, back to business.

Many, many dusty hours later.

Back to the motor mount project.

Time to start prepping and painting. This is the second sailboat that I have stripped down and painted. Last time I used materials and paints that yielded results that were not so great. This time I decided to spend a little more time doing my homework and choose paints that come highly recommended.

I bought all of my products from Jamestown Distributors. I have been dealing with them for about 3 years and they have never let me down. They have some super enthusiastic staff who are happy to problem solve and trouble shoot for an hour on the phone if you want to... where on earth does costumer service like that still exist??

Here is my order: for topside deck I am going to use Jamestown's house brand 'Wet Edge' white paint, for my freeboard Epifanes Mono-urethane Yacht Paint, non-skid will be KiwiGrip, and I decided to go with VC Performance Epoxy for bottom paint for the aforementioned reasons.

I am going to apply the paint using the ol' rolling and tipping method with a wet-sand in between coats.

I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Motor Mount / Indoor Projects

Next task on the list was my attempt to salvage the old motor mount. The old spacers as well as the aluminum hardware were corroded beyond repair.

These two pictures are showing the state of the mount when I purchased the boat. I knew that I was going to have to fix or replace the mount. After doing some research I quickly decided that fixing the old mount was the right/ cheapest option.

I was shocked to find that mounts could go for over 200 bucks. And any mount that was less, looked like junk.

I purchased all new SS hardware to replace the old aluminum bolts and spacers. I know, I know - steel and AL don't play well together, but I promise to keep an eye on hardware and Triflow will keep the two metals happily living together without getting TOO close.




It took about 50 dollars in hardware. Always a shock that a pile of bolts can add up to so much.

The trickiest part was making spacers to replace the old busted up AL ones.  I ended up making them out of nylon spacers that I had to cut down, sand, and bore to fit properly.

The finished product is not so pretty BUT...

It goes up!

And it goes down!!

I can't really complain. I am going to complain about that old rotten sticky plastic top-cap.
I had some apple wood from a tree that I pruned last year, so I thought that I'd make a little wood handle cap.

Left is to stain the cap and of course build the plate for the motor to be mounted onto.

It was a long day and freezing outside, so instead of venturing out I thought that I would continue the indoor projects...this meant making some food and doing some glassing research to start the process of thinking about upgrading the rudder.

First pizza!

Next boil down some of last summers frozen strawberries and pull the warm yogurt out of their slow-cooker / incubator. Of course this project was actually started 8 hours before... right before dealing with the motor mount dilemma.

Now that I had a meal and a healthy dessert in me it was time for a little experimenting.
I have seen other Com-Pac owners foil their rudders. It really sounds like this is undoubtedly an improvement to the sailing qualities of the CP 16.

I love the excitement of sailing close to the wind, so I have got to pursue any path that can allow this boat to point higher. Following some methods that I have seen online and how people have created foiled CP rudders I thought that I would do some materials testing and build a little surfboard.

The insulation board that I used was almost impossible to shape with any blade that I owned. I found, after some choice words were expelled, that making rough cuts with a blade and sanding to a finer shape was the way to go shaping this material.

My sturdy little board came out ok. It had very little flex when put under great pressure. With a few more layers of glass I would expect this combination to be bombproof.

This project is leading me to want to continue testing the marriage of these two materials.

Trailer Love

With the interior of the hull cleaned up it was time to tackle the trailer.

New Parts: Axle, hubs, bearings, tires, lights, winch, wood for bunks.

I carried the hull out of its makeshift winter shelter...the boat is surprisingly light with no ballast, wood, or hardware - go figure.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'll let them speak for themselves.

I spent two days fixing up the trailer and removing the old crappy trailer components.

It was a relief to get this project out of the way and knowing that my boat was going to be sitting on a more sturdy trailer.

The trailer getting stripped down - note the broken axle.

The replacement axle getting build up.

Lights...

Axle...

Bunks

Winter Cleaning

Now that I have the ballast removed, the next move is to remove the rest of the rotten wood from the hull.

This winter has been a rough one and working outside has been slow going for me. The high temp of the day was going to be 9 degrees F. I wanted to take advantage of my school winter break, but mother nature was not going to go easy on me.

The first project that I wanted to tackle was removing the rest of the wood and dewaxing the inside of the hull.

I chipped, vacuumed, cut, chiseled, vacuumed, sanded, pounded, and vacuumed more.

When I was finished I wiped the hull down with Interlux 202. Of course it was a struggle to clean the desovled wax before the solution froze.

I'm sure I should wipe the hull down again. It was just too cold to be attempting that job. But I just wasn't going to be happy unless I tried.

7 hours later:

Lead

This past weekend I drove up to Maine to check some boxes off of my list-

• visit friends

• buy some gear at Hamilton Marine

• eat smelt

• buy some lead

• find Steve

With snow blowing in it was questionable whether or not driving 5+ hours was a good idea. As anyone who lives in NYC knows, getting out of this place on a Friday afternoon can add hours to any trip...but for some reason it never stops people from making their escapes for a peaceful urban-free weekend. Nor did it stop me.

I landed in Portland after a 7 hour drive and got to my friend's house as she was going to bed: check.

We woke up to snow flying and cold temps. Perfect weather to go shopping, Hamilton Marine it was: check. 

Six hours and inches of snow later it was time to head up north to catch the night tide. 

The word on the river was that the smelt weren't biting, but we were hungry for a fish and what else is there to do on a Maine's winter night?

Around 10 pm we caught our only fish and fried her up in a beer can. She was a beauty and a tasty fellow: check. 

We headed back to Portland after the tide had gone out.

At 7:30 am I was to meet a guy in the parking lot of Whole Foods to buy some lead. I am still on the fence as to how to best wrap up this keel ordeal, but had to make a descision of how much lead to buy- 300 pounds, 400 pounds, the full 450???

300 hundred pounds was the final descision. This means that I'll probably end up with a keel filled with 300 pounds of lead and 150 pounds of concrete. There, done: check.

The next project was to find an allusive man named Steve. My buddy and I met a dude named Steve last year around the same time while I was looking for a project boat. I found a guy on Craigslist selling a Flicka project. It turned out that this guy owned over 50 sailboats in all states of disrepair. The Flicka was beautiful, but the logistics of moving the boat, the money that I would have to put into her, and the condition that it was in put me off.

What Steve had though was a sailboat junkyard with tons of used parts that he would sell for a song - sails, lines, chain, deck hardware, anchors, spars, rigging, etc. I had just sold my boat so I had no need for collecting more junk at that point. Fast forward to now, I have the need and Steve had what I needed. But how to locate some dude who's address was forgotten, number misplaced, and Craigslist add long expired? Technology.

At Steve's place we shot a thousand pictures of various cool boats, project ideas, and this insane space littered with countless sailboats.

I never thought that geotagging photos was that useful of a technological advancement until this moment. Within a few minutes we had our destination determined.

After buying the lead my buddy and I headed out hoping at the very least we could establish contact with Steve again. 

But what we found was a heart breakingly gut wrenching scene.

Nothing, nilch, nada. Just a small clearing in a Maine forest. It was like we had drempt the whole thing. Not even a sign that there was ever a sailboat that had washed up there. Unbelievable.

We stood in the space for minutes reckoning what had happened, what could of happened, and how on earth all those boats just went away. Then we were both struck with a profound sadness and grief... What ever became of that Flicka? The potential of that little seaworthy vessel. I was kicking myself that I didn't save her when I had the chance.

Big mistake: check

My only hope is that she's in a better place.