Sexy boats...

The WN Ragland is docked near CWB, getting ready for a large trip up north (so I hear).

Cass and I went over there yesterday evening and took some pics.

Amazing boat.

Out for a Memorial Day spin

So, being done with the port side of the boat, I needed to turn the boat around in the slip to get at the starboard side... So my friend Bill and I took the boat for a quick spin on the lake and brought her in bow first...





So, here she is in the new position... now we get to look at her made-over side from the other dock...

Paint!

Here is the final run finishing off the port side painting... its good to be (half way) done!

I got the final primer coat on last week:


I also have the color coat for the white sheer stripe on there too, but you can't see it over the white undercoater... oh well...


Then I got everything all masked off... this took a while getting the long sheer done straight.


Note how the sheer stripe doesn't go fully stem to stern...




And, then I painted it! Woo!


I also got more deck paint done... but that is not nearly as exciting. Here is the masking of it though:


Now, for the other side....

Wooding the hull

So, this weekend, I started the rather large task of wooding the topsides. The old paint was coming off like a banana peel without much help from the heatgun... definately time to do this.

I have the new paint ready to go, and I'm sure as heck not going to put hundreds of dollars worth of paint on top of such a poor foundation... so, I'm stripping it all. I'm getting what I can at the dock and will be finishing the counter and near the waterline soon during haulout.

Note: yes, I had a tarp between the hull and the water keeping the peelings out of the water.

Here she is, verified as a woody, with sealer on:



Me, looking rather stressed out about the while proposition... hard work:



And in the evening with glazing applied to the hull:


Still lots more work to do!

Toerails

I got another coat of sealer on the toerails this weekend...



And some primer for paint... this is them (the white boards) in a large pile of other lumber:


Pretty simple...

Major score!

So, today I got some major good stuff for the boat! I got in contact with a fellow in Olympia who had a lot of awesome marine gear he was going to take to a swap meet (and surely sold in seconds), but he let me pick through before the meet.... Everything here is cherry. I've been keeping my eye out for items like these... I didn't expect to get them all in one go, but I'll take it!

First off, a Perko Bi-color bow light, with 12v and oil internals.



A Perko anchor light. I want to get a shroud for it so I can make it a 135-degree stern light as well. This one is oil only... But a 12v retrofit base wouldn't be hard to go if one was so inclined.


And another big score, a Chelsea barometer. This thing is massive! Much more solid than the new Weems and Plath ones I've looked at.


Everything here definitely falls under the category of "they don't make 'em like that anymore."

Toerail strippin'

I also have gotten the port side toe rails stripped and coated with one layer of sealer. Obie came over and I scraped the old varnish off with the heat gun and scraper, and he sanded and sealed. It worked well and having an extra hand helping was really nice.

I also got another coat of sealer on the aft deck trim:


Here is stripping the toerails.... you can see the varnished cabin trim next to it.


Strippin'



And Obie sanding it up with 120.

Painting trim and nonskid

Last weekend, I got a lot of painting done.

First off, before getting the nonskid out, I painted some lines with the Brightsides so there will be a nice, seamless transition between the two textures.


I got the aft end of the cabing house done too with a nice, crisp line. I don't currently have any wood trim for that part (which I thought I had), so I made a clean line of paint to varnish to suffice for now.



And I painted another transition in gloss paint to go from the varnished coaming to the nonskid on the deck:


Then I preped out the aft deck with 60 grit on my RO sander... Here is a shot after that (with mostly the old deck paint):


Then I masked it off:


And painted. I did not paint the full side decks outboard of the coaming, because we were having people over to the boat and I knew we couldn't keep them off the fresh paint throughout the evening. What stuff that was vulnerable, I masked off with a little blue tape (even though someone still stepped in it later... crap).

Coaming prep

Getting ready to paint the aft deck, I wanted to get the laz hatch coaming stripped and at least began the re-varnishing before the deck paint went down...

So a couple of days ago I did that... Here is the initial tear-in on the wood.


After scraping the old varnish off and sanding with 60 grit... it became apparent that the old Sekaflex around the coaming, sealing it to the deck was going bad, so I tore that all off and re-sealed it with roof patch. It is a bit of an experiment, but I think that the tar will do the job just fine, and much cheaper than 5200. With a good masking job, it looks just great:


Looking into the abyss:


I also stripped and sanded some more trim wood... here is the aft toerail board and the forward cabin trim (it started raining before I got sealer on them, so I took them inside):

Dink paint!

One thing about Cass, is that she will start doing something random... which will then blossom into a full blown project.


Last weekend, she just started poking at the crappy paint in the dingy... and kept going...


Stopping to pose for a picture sometimes, though...


... and kept going... sanding the dingy...


... and trying to feel Aurelia paint chips...


Then cleaning out...


And painting...


Now I have a red dingy. Nicknamed the Blood Bucket.


Which is actually a good use for that paint, now that I've abandoned the black-based color scheme.... we actually used up the last of that quart, so, waste not want not!