New Topsides

The grey primer coat on Wisdom is now a thing of the past. The topsides have finally been painted and she is very white and very shiny!

When I bought Wisdom, her topsides were heavily oxidized and shiny was the last descriptor on the list of things she was not. I gave her a paint job using Roll and Tip to make her look better, but she was never this pretty! The paint job I did made her look good from a distance, but when you got close, there was no shine, no pizzazz, nothing. She was just flat white paint covering her hull.

In the Azores, we had a professional spray job done and now she looks new! This is one way to take 50 years off the clock!

Living Somewhere New

What is the goal of cruising? Is it to sail? Probably not, if your dream is to sail, you will find it easier to attain that goal by joining a local sailing club. The goal of cruising is to live somewhere new, somewhere exiting, and somewhere different.

Sailing helps make these dreams a reality as it provides you with a mobile home that requires no fuel to move great and vast distances. Once you get somewhere, the goal is not to sail around some more, but instead to explore, to hike, and to live there!

We arrived at the Azores, a small Portuguese archipelago, in August 2018 and we are still here now and loving it! When we do finally leave, we will set sail for mainland Portugal, where begin to make our way into the Mediterranean Sea.

Why? To live in amazing places that we could only dream about!

How? Because cruising allows us to do this!

Bulkhead Repair

The plywood that butted up towards the shower got wet frequently and finally rotted away. The bulkhead is made of two layers of 3/4 inch plywood. Having two layers actually makes repairing this much easier. Instead of worrying about getting a perfect fit and junction on a butt margin, I can step the repairs and grant myself a lot of surface area to glue the repairs to.

Instead of repairing the problem with a future problem, I chose to use 3/4 inch closed cell foam core boards. These are unable to rot but offer incredible amounts of strength. Being the same size as the old plywood, they fit perfectly in place. All I need to do is cut back the rotten wood with the larger side of the hole facing me in the head. This means that the first piece is cut out the largest, larger than the second piece which lays deep to it.

With all the rotten wood removed and cut back to clean and solid margins, I simply glued the foam core into place and glassed it all together. The result is a repaired bulkhead that won’t rot again as the shower will remain there.

Battleship Gray

We are being painted outside and without a tent. This means that the painting schedule is weather dependent, and not very dependable. 

Work in the Azores happens very slowly. This project began in August 2018, early August to be exact! The painter said it would take a few weeks and told me of the rush he was in to beat the rainy season with the project.  

Come late October and the painter finally gets around to starting the project. The frequent excuse for the slow progress is the rain.  

Yeah, rain in the rainy season. Well, the painter managed to get the primer on with a few dry days and now she sits in her gray glory, waiting.  

Just as the rain streaks down her topsides, our hopes of seeing her white also trickle away.  

Thankfully, the longer the painter takes, the more tube I have to earn money while working back in the states. The total bill to repaint the topsides (sanding, preping, fairing, priming, and painting) was a grand total of €2,000! 

At that price, he can take his time and I’ll take mine. Soon or later, it will be finished.  

Rope Cleaning Station

Ropes become lines the moment they enter the vicinity of a boat (unless you are the select few ropes that remain a “rope on a boat”). The trouble is, these sheets, halyards, jacklines, and other control lines all get dirty over time. Between the salt that gets into the fibers and the algae that grows on them if they don’t dry out enough, the lines become filthy!

When you remove a line from a boat and turn it back into (dirty) rope, you may want to clean it. Washing machines are not a good idea as all the agitation will form infinite knots in your ropes. Many detergents (especially fabric softeners) will actually weaken the strength of the rope. You are pretty much left with the option of a bucket filled with Dawn Soap and water.

You could simply mix the rope around in the bucket for a while and try to work the dirt out of the rope fibers the best you can, but this will end up with a dirty rope where the only thing that came out in the wash were the good intentions.

The next option is to add a brush to the equation. A good scrub brush will help loosen and remove dirt and other contaminates from the rope and its fibers, but scrubbing a rope can be rather challenging.

A friend of mine made this apparatus to facilitate the cleaning process of his jib sheets. The brushes are simply clamped to a sturdy table, allowing him to work the rope through the brushes with both hands to really clean them up well. The rope that is waiting simply soaks in the soapy water of the bucket, helping to loosen any filth that is on the line.

Photo and idea courtesy of: Scott Erwin

As the rope gets cleaner, the water can be changed out to prevent the clean rope from stewing in the old filthy water. The process really makes an impossible task much easier, and the end result is a much cleaner jib sheet once it is returned to it's home on the boat.