First visit of the year

Finding the right day to visit the boatyard can be difficult in January. There's lots to do on the boat, but its mostly painting and varnishing, so there's very little point in starting anything even when its a sunny day. Its still too cold for the paint to dry before it gets damp.

I talked myself into going today to remeasure the galley since we want to look at cookers at the boat show, and got a nice surprise. Paul has finished the work we asked him to do. All the little bits of caulking repair and re-stopping have been done, and the main hatch looks very smart. There was a letter waiting when I got home, detailing what he's done and with suggestions for what should happen next.

1) He's put three coats of varnish on all his wood, and while it looks lovely this is not enough to protect it through the summer. It will need sanding lightly in the spring, before getting a few more coats.

2) He had to burn off most of the paint from the covering boards on the foredeck before he could caulk the seams, so this will need repainting when its drier. He used sikaflex rather than red lead stopping here, but it can be painted over in the same way.

3) The stopping that had come out was probably because the hull got power washed before the stopping was really hard. This can take  a few years! Looks like we'll be hand scraping our fouling off for a while...

4) There seems to be some weeping from some of the bolt heads in the iron floors visible on the hull planking. This could be a problem in a couple of years, so we'll need to keep an eye on it. It's a shame if so, since the floor bolts were replaced just after we bought the boat!