The final weekend before splash!

With one weekend left, the push was on as we drove to Shenny last Saturday.  With rainy weather forecast for Sunday, our main goal for Saturday was to paint the fourth coat of Interprotect plus the two coats of bottom paint onto the hull.  Everything else would be gravy.

Timing the fourth coat of Interprotect plus the first coat of bottom paint is important.  The goal is to apply the bottom paint while the barrier coat is semi-dry.  You want to leave a thumb print in the paint without getting paint on your thumb.  If you wait too long your choice is to either paint a fifth coat or sand the bottom.  At over $100/gallon a fifth coat was not appealing, nor was more sanding, so as we drove down we discussed our strategy.The paint had been drying very quickly during the first three coats, so we decided we would paint one side of the hull before moving on to the other side.  Jeff didn’t want to lose any time stirring the bottom paint, so he made sure it was ready to go before we started putting on the barrier coat.  We started at the bow and, true to form, by the time we had reached the stern it was time to put the first coat of bottom paint on.

It was a very busy couple of hours, but by lunch time we had the entire hull painted with the last coat of Interprotect and the first coat of bottom paint.  The timing wasn’t critical for the second coat of bottom paint, so we decided to have an extended lunch break before getting back to work.  By mid-afternoon the entire hull (except for under the poppets) had been painted.  Hooray!

About 15 minutes after we were finished the owners of Little Bristol stopped by to say hello.  We hadn’t seen them all winter so it was nice to catch up and hear about their future plans with Little Bristol (soon to be renamed “Seabiscuit” – a fantastic name for a 24′ Bristol!).  We told them that their timing was good, because if they had arrived an hour earlier we would have stuck paint brushes in their hands.

We wrapped up the day by figuring out where we were going to keep the items we had brought down that day (sure to change multiple times I’m sure), and then we drove home, tired but content.

Sunday called for showers and rain, but we still had too much we wanted to finish before launching so we drove back down to Shenny armed with our list.

We finished running the wiring for our Nature’s Head (we ended up with just enough wire), installed the anchor on the bow roller, rinsed out the anchor locker and put the rode and chain into it, and did some inspecting to figure out how to wire our solar panel which we’ll install next weekend on the water.  The bathroom sink had also mysteriously managed to fix itself so Jeff put some caulk around it and hooked up the drain hose.  Now we have two working sinks on Pegu Club!

In between two separate trips to West Marine (to go along with the previous day’s trip to Defender) we also managed to install a new bilge pump.  Pegu Club’s bilge pump didn’t have an automatic setting, meaning that it only ran when it was manually switched on.  This absolutely would not do given that she is going to be mainly unattended during the week.  We did a bit of research and it looks like we may have been able to buy and install a float switch, but we figured by the time we did that we might as well have just bought an automatic pump with less to install, so that’s what we did.  Now it’s wired directly to the battery and if the water rises enough to trigger the float switch, it will turn on without our assistance.  Much better.

By the time we drove home we knew we wouldn’t be able to finish everything before splashing, but a boater’s to-do list is never truly complete so we weren’t surprised.  As of this writing we are going to drive down to Shenny tomorrow (Wednesday) to wash the boat, and drive down on Thursday to paint underneath the poppets.  We also need to put Pegu-teeny in the water.  I had wanted to paint the boot stripe and the top stripe, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.  Everything else can wait until we’re in the water – or until the next off-season.

Unbelievably, there are now zero more weekends to go!