After a frantic phone call to the boss to secure much needed time off, it was time to get down to the real work. We had 2 weeks, as part of the deal with Fred, he had other work and didn't need the trailer for that period of time, but would need it very soon afterwards. YIKES! The good news was that the bottom was in pretty good shape, the keel, not so much. On first glance, the bottom didn't look to need much work ar all (not to be the case, sigh) while the keel was covered in blisters and would have to be refaired.

As I got the sander out and started to attack the keel, we noticed several raised areas on the hull. After sanding off one of the larger raised areas, our initial relief turned to dissapointment. We had blisters on the hull. Forty eight at last count. Each was a blister that we had fixed last time, no new blisters, just recurring ones. Here you can see the grey structural filler we used last time. The darker areas in the grey are the wet areas that need to be repaired. They were all seeping either water or uncured resin, probably left over from the initial construction of the hull.

Needless to say, I wasn't very happy, so we started to dig the blisters out to let them drain and dry. David Rehberg came up with the idea to carefully use a Forstner bit to dig the structural filler out. This consumed a large part of the first day on the slab.

The keel could not be ignored, and it was next on the list. Below the old paint and blisters are partially sanded off the starboard side. As the keel is lead, the blisters were just in the paint and in the fairing compound.

It took a while, but the keel sanded out pretty easily. Next it was time to break out the VC Watertight fairing compound to cover the exposed lead and to smooth out the worst parts of the keel. The decision was made not to fully fair the keel and to totally cover it will Watertight, but just to fix the worst part and to get the boat back in the water. It is a cruiser afterall. If it were the primary race boat, the keel itself would have taken a week and more than the one liter of Watertight we used. Below is the final fairing job. It ain't pretty, but this is the only time anyone will see it and the extra tenths of a knot it would give would just mean less time on the water.

With the keel being as fair as it was going to get (and with the day being Saturday!), it was time to get some epoxy on the keel and make it look like some progress was being made. As usual, we chose Interlux 2000 two part epoxy as the water sealer. This time, we just rolled it on straight, not spraying it. Given the running around in the morning for supplies and a quick lunch at McDonalds (sigh), it was 1 pm before I got to the lake, after staging, mixing, and waiting, it was 3 pm before the first coat went on. At the temperature we had today, which was really nice for working outside, I had a 3 hour wait between coats, which meant the second coat was done at 6:30pm. But, there was paint on the boat.