Things are starting to look a little better. Over the past few days I did a ton of sanding and fairing. My longboard is now welded to my arm and my finger tips are sanded off. I could have done some more filling and fairing but I decided to call it “DONE”.

For primer, I decided to use “Interlux Interprotect 2000E with micro plates”. Try to say that 10 times fast. It’s not really a traditional top sides primer. It’s normally used under the waterline as a barriercoat to prevent osmotic blistering. I liked the big name and the fact that it is billed as a barrier coat. It’s a 2 part epoxy with some heavy duty solvents. I’ve had to where a respirator while working with it.

It took quite a while to get all of the dust off of Catalpa. I bought a new HEPA filter for my shop-vac and wiped her down with alcohol several times. I rolled the decks and painted the cabin house with a good brush. The first coat covered all of the cracks in the deck. I intend to get at least three coats over all of the critical areas.

The taping took more time than the actual painting. My co-captain took over the taping duties so I could get away from it for a little while.

The primer is going down fairly smooth. I’ve had to add extra solvents to it due to the heat. Once this is done, it’s back to sanding again. Then onto gloss paint.

Over the past few days I’ve had some opportunity to do a bit of thinking. What percentage of my life has been spent sanding something? I bet that it is a pretty big number. I sand everything. Every single thing I have ever created has been sanded. You’d think I enjoy sanding. I don’t. Over the winter I started brewing beer as a hobby. Beer doesn’t get sanded and it helps relieve some of the pain created by sanding all day.

The deck work is progressing. I’ve patched the large areas with new balsa and three layers of fiberglass. All of the various drying holes have been plugged too. The deck has a lot of uneven areas due to repair work and grinding the original non-skid gelcoat off.

In the first couple of pictures you can see the most recent application of epoxy based fairing compound.

This stuff goes on the deck and then you basically sand most of it off so it fills in the low spots. I use a big 6″ random orbit sander and a long-board. I made the long-board by gluing a  40grit belt (belt sander) to a piece of plywood. It works well and also promotes a good upper body workout.

The last 2 photos are post-sanding. I still have one or two more coats of fairing and then the first coat of epoxy primer.

Work has progressed slowly since my last update. The New England winter was pretty mild this year. I probably would have been able to complete most of my project but it has been a busy winter. As often happens, the boat work was delayed.

The main reason for enclosing Catalpa was to explore and repair the extensive deck damage. The deck consists of a top and bottom layer of fiberglass that encapsulates a balsa wood core. The gel-coat that covers the deck is very thick but unfortunately the top layer of fiberglass is very thin. This top layer has got many stress cracks in it. This allows water to penetrate into the balsa core which creates all sorts of problems. With the help of a moisture meter, and by drilling core samples, I was able to find the extent of the problems.

Back in November I started cutting into the deck. Where I found rotten balsa, I completely removed the top skin and the balsa core. In areas where I found high moisture, but the balsa was intact, I decided to drill the deck with many holes to allow the moisture to escape the core material. Essentially the deck has been drying out for the last six months or so. It worked well. I checked everything again with the moisture meter and it is dry.

Next step in the process is to grind all of the gel-coat nonskid off of the deck I can’t match the many numerous repairs with the old nonskid so I plan on replacing it with a product called Kiwigrip. More on that later.

Anyway the deck grinding continues on. The shed is acting like a greenhouse now so the temps are probably close to 90 degrees around mid day. Add to that a hooded tyvek suit, dust mask, and ear muffs, you get a very disgruntled boat worker. Most of the destructive work is done. I’ll soon be moving on to fixing things. My goal is to launch by mid July.