January 2016 – Adventures on the Club

Pegu Club’s original owner had documented her with the U.S. Coast Guard, and we wanted to reinstate it. For us, the primary advantage of registering her is that it can make customs entry and clearance easier in foreign ports. Jeff also likes the fact that a documented vessel doesn’t display its numbers on the outside of the boat. Just an aesthetics thing.

Once a boat is documented, it’s documented forever. However, reinstating the documentation can be easier said than done. I had read in multiple places that the people who work at the Coast Guard National Vessel Documentation Center are very friendly and helpful, so after reading through their website I decided to call to make sure I understood the necessary steps. Continue reading “Coast Guard Documentation: Check!” →

Now that we’ve finished scraping the bottom of the boat, it’s time to turn our attention to sanding. Scraping doesn’t get rid of all of the paint, and before we put the barrier coat on the bottom needs to be paint free – down to the gelcoat.

We only had one sander, so initially Jeff gamely sanded on his own while I worked inside the boat. The inside of the VHF cabinet needed to be cleaned, along with the area where the Origo is inserted, so I broke out our trusty Clorox Clean-up and got to work. I was very pleased with the difference in the VHF cabinet (“before” is on the left”):

Before

After

I also started working on wiring diagrams for our 12 volt electrical system. We still are complete novices when it comes to all things electric, but bit-by-bit we’re learning.

It was clear after a few trips to Shenny that we needed to get another sander if we wanted to be finished any time in the near future, so after the obligatory trip to Home Depot we were back at Shenny last weekend ready to get back at it. This was going to be my first time sanding, so Jeff showed me the ropes and we got to it. Continue reading “So I like sanding – yes, this makes me weird.” →