Sorry about no new post over the weekend - the wifi was no good in the yard where I was working on Blazer.
Friday at 08.30 I motored round to the lifting spot and removed the back stay - It was only just getting light.
The two crane operators did a great job of slinging and lifting Blazer onto a trailer and tractor - they then towed Blazer up the ramp to the yard and set up the pressure washer.
The underwater areas of Blazer were not quite as bad as I thought but there were a lot of sea squirts and weed.
The Copper plated prop experiment is working I think. It's been on 5 years now - The weed growth was light and the cement like deposit that always builds up came off easily with hot water and a soft scraper.
That cement build up was the reason that I started the experiment because it used to build up rapidly and was really hard to get off. The copper coating is like new - no electrolysis at all !!
The pressure washer was a big petrol job and was so powerful I had to brace myself or it would have blown me over !!
It took a couple of hours to clean all the debris off and some of the layers of old antifouling - in a lot of places the layers had been stripped off back to the commercial grade stuff ( brown ) that I had a company put on in Grimsby - Good stuff - there were no exposed areas of the Vyniguard paint that is protecting the hull - Very good stuff.
I spent the rest of Friday scraping off the prop shaft and prop - changing anodes - resealing the keel to hull joint with polyurethane sealant - Note - there were no rust streaks from the keel joint like there used to be since I fitted the two keel anodes !
One bit of concern are the heads of the bolts that hold the toilet outlet sea cock in place. - I replaced it about 5 years ago with a new one from Ebay that had no bolts or flange. - The bolts from Blakes were expensive and I found these bronze bolts much cheaper - NO GOOD !! - they can't be the proper material - the heads are corroding - I will swap them at the next lift out for the proper ones - Penny wise - Pound foolish !!
A close inspection of the hull showed no blisters at all - (GOOD NEWS) - but a few areas of gell coat pimples - (NOT GOOD NEWS) - I scraped off all the hull coatings about eight years ago and found similar pimples - sanded them flat - filled any that popped- and didn't worry about them.
They are caused by some error in the layers of gellcoat and not in the main thickness of fibreglass.
I can not get Vyniguard hull coating quickly here so I chose to ignore the pimples until next time when I can be ready to sort them out.
Saturday - I found that I had a litre of really good underwater primer and I scraped off the underside of the keels and applied lots of coats - they have never been anti fouled because Blazer usually sits on the keels in the yard - but this time she stayed in the trailer all weekend and I just had enough clearance to paint them.
I used lots of the primer on the keels and joints - I used the lot !!
I then masked up the waterline red boot top stripe - (4 strips of masking tape 120 feet !!) and painted that with hard antifoul paint.
I then brush painted the keels - all the awkward areas and the part that joins to the boot top stripe.
Sunday - I applied two full coats of antifouling to all the other areas with the roller - I kept going until I had used the whole gallon with just enough left for the support pad areas when the crane lifts us back in on Monday afternoon at 3pm.
Monday I washed the hull topsides - cleaned the log impeller and sprayed it with the thick silicone lube - and touched up all round.
We were lifted in on the dot with no fuss - ( very professional ) - refitted the back stay and motored back to our berth (she glided along ) - four days of hard work but a labour of love !!
The weather had been perfect throughout the job and I cleaned up everything - disposed of the roller / tins and brushes - then settled down to a corned beef casserole that I made in the morning with a well earned glass of Muscadet. - Fantastic.
Mike.
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