Still raining !!

freshly undercoated cabin.

 With the close of the season, it is now time to tackle some boat projects during the winter. This winter the cabin re- paint was long overdue the original white gloss had gone quite yellow in places and had rather a lot of shrapnel wounds from various dropped or thrown articles, so I began with a good sanding, with the vacuum cleaner hooked up essential as otherwise it is really difficult to get the boat clean enough to paint!

Load of dents etc. to fill and re-sand then a rolled coat of undercoat, and that’s as far as I can get till the temperature rises slightly to put on the gloss again, don’t want to risk it all turning out pimply !

I came across a second hand Simpson and Laurence anchor winch which would be handy on the foredeck so preparing to remove the air vent which was not in use and was such a silly design as to be bound to let water in at every chance, so was therefore always closed.

There is a lesson to be learned here I thought to off-centre it to the left so the chain was routed to the left of the Samson post which seemed like the best way and I could cover the holes of the air vent also, so duly drilled the bolt holes for the winch, after thinking a little I checked if I had considered the gypsy direction, what a bugger !! it has to be rounded from the other side, all my holes are wrong !! Although not a huge problem can still route it to the right, just got to get some better temperatures to epoxy over the area and re-drill, while I was busy with anchors have fitted a more suitable roller carriage to take the new Rocna, so it can’t come back so far and chip my paint work, getting there slowly !!

exposed deck head with no nuts or back plates on the fairleads !!

a motley bunch of fairleads, two left ones are Original.

 

After removing the ceiling boards under the deck, there was not only no insulation, but you may expect to find a backplate and  a nut on a bolted on fairlead, nothing just a small brass bolt threaded through a 3mm steel deck, glad I didn’t discover that mid ocean !!

Just wish that bloody rain would stop for a day or two occasionally, been damp and cold, tricky for these jobs, I don’t remember having these problems in the last few winters which have been often quite mild and dry.

 Now approaching Christmas and has been quite a year if not the most exiting I feel it has been worth all the time and energy spent fixing and upgrading.

I have replaced the sails and all of the lines, stripped and re-varnished the mast, and also done a total re-paint to the topsides and antifouling, and when that was done I could get my sons Regina 1 also repainted and set up for him and his mates to go off cruising.

The proud skipper of the Regina 1