Ala Moana on Dry Dock

The other day we pulled Rogerio's new Tiki 21, Ala Moana, out of the water, and onto a floating dock.

I have been planning to do this with Arpex. Therefore, I welcomed this execrcise, and recommended it to Rogerio. It went easy like a piece of pie. For Arpex, it will be more difficult. Arpex is longer and heavier.

10 Years Challenge

Browsing the trough the blogs archives, I got curious,  and looked for a picture of myself, 10 years ago. I found this one, from December 2008. I had a long way to go still.

Maintenance Tasks

In between the Christmas  and New Year Holidays, I managed to execute some overdue maintenance tasks on Arpex. 

The main task was to repair the edge of the hull on the cabin entrance. It had suffered, and the wood was exposed. Before it started to deteriorate, it was better to provide solid repair. This was provided in form of sanding, fairing, glueing and laminating with glass-epoxi. And then painted. 

To be quite honest, I admit that I did a more than sloppy job, in terms of finishing. Mainly the painting was not at all up to standard. The sanding and laminating was done in two layers of bi-directional 300g fiberglass, and well saturated in epoxi, which achieved a thorough cure, and no blisters. Seemingly a healthy bond to the wood. But the alleged automotive epoxi white paint was horrible to apply with my brush, and it left an unsatisfying finish. Of course I did also not have tape available on the boat to make a proper making. ... At least, I did find it at that moment. I am afraid I will have to sand it down again, and do a new cover. Wile working the area, I also sanded and epoxied the entrance hatch cover. Also there, the repair came in good time, to preserve the material in good shape.

I also gave the "bow-sprit" a bit of love from the sander, and a coat of epoxi and then white paint. Since the paint showed to be fairly rugged, however weak in finishing, I decided to give the dingy bottom a new white cover. Since when the dingy is on deck, it becomes part of the cockpit, being additional seating area, it makes sense to keep it white and clean. The bottom suffers a lot, when it gets dragged over the beach. So cuts and bruises a are regular occurrence. Therefore, before the paint, I also made repairs with epoxi and glass.

Other smaller points of bruise, were epoxied and painted. On the mast for example, where the boom meets the mast, and on cabin edges, where ropes might friction. I was happy to have done this the keep Arpex in good shape.