Sandy Bottoms

The last few days have been a blur with many lost hours sanding and re-sanding this enormous boat.  There hasn't been much of an update on this because the incremental progress doesn't translate well to photos or writing or mental health.

Since the big fiberglass episode of 2020, I've sanded the whole hull down to a dull grey, as described.  The manual describes "a full day" could be dedicated to sanding the hull, but it was really more than a week, 2-3 hours a session.  I simply don't have the stamina or the patience to dedicate more than that.  But it got done partly with the help of podcasts.

As a side note, I never really got into podcasts.  I'm the perfect demographic for it, but as a hyper-visual learner, the idea of listening instead of reading never really appealed to me.  Faced with the hours-long choice of the shopvac or the dulcet tones of a journalist or storyteller and maybe learning something, I opted for the latter.

I started with Serial: Season One (the one that really started it all); NASA We Have a Podcast; 1619; The Sultanate (a podcast from an expat in Oman where I will be moving this fall); Every Little Thing; and a couple others.  It really makes the sanding just a bit more enjoyable, and I feel like I've entered a new realm of cultural awareness.  Don't get me wrong -- sanding still sucks, and I'm not listening to podcasts when I'm not sanding, but it is a much better enterprise.  To put the hours in perspective, I finished Serial: Season One and at least a couple dozen sessions of the others during this sanding effort.  Gird your loins, fellas!

Here's the start of it with about a third of one side done sanded down.  This took about 3 hours.  I used 80 grit to get the first stuff down and went over it again with 120 where needed.

 

After awhile, I moved to the topsides and got as far as this before putting down the Bosch and thinking about actually sailing.

Luckily, Chris, a fellow PocketShip builder who lives in the area asked if I wanted to go for a run.  And how!  So after a couple scheduling stops and starts, we were off on a spirited day on Lake Waconia, getting back just ahead of sunset, but not after a great dinner at a lakeside restaurant.

I promised not to pepper Chris with too many questions, but I was just getting back into the flow of things and needed answers.  He was more than happy to oblige, as always, and I'm grateful to call him a friend and source of motivation.  His boat still looks amazing after almost 10 years.

I still had the beast in the garage to deal with, along with a couple logistical problems.  The first was to deal with the various layers.  While sanding, these layers become exposed as lines which are actually small depressions where two layers meet up.  It can be difficult to sand these down well because it's easy to burn too deeply through a layer of glass.  I knew this would be the tradeoff between a horizontal 'glassing job (where you take the 'glass and spread it aft-forward instead of across the beam) so I wasn't surprised to see it.  There's also a risk that the painting will not be entirely uniform over these areas.  Time will tell.

One area that did surprise me was this fenced area on the port side.  For some reason the epoxy here was really light.  A quick rub with the sander exposed fiberglass layers and a sheen underneath.  I can only conclude that I didn't apply a second or third layer here -- and this was only really discovered after sanding it down a bit.

So, out came the epoxy and a couple wasted hours!  This of course needed to be sanded down again, along with a couple small patches because why not.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about how to level the keel.  It's kind of tough to see from the above photo but I spent a couple days figuring this out.  I have a much bigger garage than I did when I started this (I literally moved next door a few years ago) but a much smaller house.  That meant stuff wound up in the garage and in practice my workspace is much smaller.

 

I used a couple small 2-ton jacks and jackstands I was going to return to Amazon to flatten the keel.  The tradeoff was I couldn't use the furniture dollies as I couldn't get the bow high enough to level it out.  After a few hours over a couple days, here is the result:

The angle of the photo is actually a bit off.  The middle bubble is centered and the boat lies flat.  The photo reminds me of a little spaceship hovering over the grey landscape of a moon.  Of course, just after this photo, I bumped the keel and the spaceship fell off and disappeared into the garage.  I still haven't found it.  Whatever.  Onto painting!