Picking up the pace

We've picked up the pace a little since the boat came out of the water about a month ago. We now have a number of projects going at once.

Using a heat gun, we stripped off the tape along the boot top. The tape looked terrible but it took four hours to get it all off and then wash the adhesive off with acetone. Once we have masked that off, we'll paint on a new brown stripe.

Removed the old antenna hardware from the sides of the flybridge. Nothing on this boat comes off easily. We fabricated two new brackets for the radio and GPS antennas and will mounts them soon. These brackets will keep the antennas from slapping on the sides of the bridge enclosure when we are underway and look a lot neater. With the help of some Internet research, we put together a high performance VHF radio antenna that will be connected to the radio on the bridge. More about that later.

We removed the 5,000 lb. pull-out sleeper sofa from the salon. It wouldn't fit through the salon door so we took it apart first and then tossed the pieces over the side onto the ground. Sorry we don't have pictures of this but we were too busy dragging all the pieces to the cockpit. The sofa went to the dumpster. That alone will probably help to our fuel mileage next summer.

All but two of the cabinet doors have been refinished, repainted and reinstalled. We are searching for a new latch assembly for the door to the head. If we can't find one, we'll clean up the old one and reinstall it.

The wiring under the helm on the flybridge was fairly messy and that's no surprise in a boat this age. Over time, old electronics equipment was replaced with new but the old wiring was left. We removed many old disconnected cables and will soon clean up the rest of the wiring. We've found a mount for the radar antenna and will be securing that soon on the front of the flybridge. Unfortunately, it is impossible to reach under the inside of the front of the flybridge far enough to to put nuts and washers on the bolts that will hold the radar antenna mount in place. That slowed us down until we found some neat stainless toggle bolts called "togglers." It looks as though those will work but we'll have to see.

This boat originally had accent stripes around the bridge and the trunk cabin. Most of them are gone but it is easy to see where they were. We think that the stripes break up the all white fiberglass and we are going to put them back on, this time with good quality paint and not the cheapo tape that Silverton used (not that we could find that tape today anyway).

Frances is probably the best masking tape applier in the Western world. She is precise and really gets it right. We've included a photo of her at work on the front of the flybridge. No, it wasn't really that dark.