Holey Boat

Dear friends, family and avid readers,

Skye is not here with us today. She is sailing, with friends from our home marina, and where my heart wants to be. So I’m here to chat with you all and update you on what’s going on in our life.

Let’s start with Skye, and where she is, and why she isn’t writing this blog post. She’s currently on our friends’ boat, and having a great time. On Thursday morning, she flew down to Daytona and boarded before they left Friday to head up to St. Augustine through the Intracoastal Waterway. On the ICW, there isn’t enough room to really sail, it’s all motoring. However, Sunday they jumped off shore, put the sails up and cruised at about 7 knots for more than 32 hours, taking shifts at the helm, to make it to Charleston yesterday, Monday. Between the three of them, they took four hour shifts, which allowed for a solid 7-8 hour break. They will be in Charleston for most of the week, then hopefully continuing on this weekend to North Carolina, and Virginia next week.

They’ll be pretty close to Skye’s parents’ house in North Carolina, so maybe there will be a visit by her devoted boyfriend and beloved dog (or beloved boyfriend and devoted dog), but we will see how everything shakes out.

Now for our boat, Batland. We got hauled out of the water first thing, after we tied up next to the lift Tuesday afternoon. Skye and I then had to make our next decision, who to ask for help to fix our boat up. While we’ve asked the yard to do things for us in the past, there was someone extremely knowledgeable and helpful back in November when we got the hole in the boat, and we decided to ask him to repair the damage. His name is Josh.

Shortly after we were out of the water, I ran into Josh and he wanted to look at it. We peeled the Flex Tape off, and immediately the analysis was a bad patch job from a previous incident. Josh mentioned that Hunter uses a different resin, and he could tell just from a quick look. Sure enough, after some grinding and sanding, it was pretty obvious where the previous patch was. The white surrounding area is gel coat, and that comes with the boat. The black part in the middle is where we’ve ground through the fiberglass and into the boat.

The patch job is very thin. The rest of the boat is a lot thicker, and the flexing of the patched section led to the damage. Josh (and I when I can help) are going to prep the inside area, then lay down more fiberglass on the interior to have a strong base to work with. Then, a piece of pvc pipe will be cut and placed between our black water tank and the hull, and that will be glassed in. That will prevent the hull from flexing, and giving it a really strong support. Finally, more pieces of glass will go on the exterior, then the barrier coat, then the paint that we have leftover from last year.

It’s not as simple as that, as the access to the interior is tiny. We need to be sure to keep dust down, so there are a few setup requirements, like a tarp and vacuum. Laying down fiberglass is usually done layer at a time, and that will take time to do. There may be sanding done between layers of fiberglass to ensure a good connection. Mixing the epoxy with the hardener, then applying it before it hardens too much.

In non-boat news, Buoy and I have moved our stuff into an apartment right on the beach. It’s been a bit chilly. Skye in Charleston gets to be about 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than Buoy and I. This morning, Buoy and I went on a walk on the beach. After Buoy attended to her business, she decided it was way too cold, and way too windy, and met me back on the stoop.