KATHLEEN FLYING “HOME” TODAY; VILISAR IN NEW COLOURS; APPLYING NON-SKID ON PAINTED DECKS; CARPENTRY WORK IN MEXICO; CONTACT TO JOE AND SANDRA MAY IN ALASKA
San Patricio Malaque, Jalisco, Mexico, Saturday, 18 February 2006

Kathleen flying “home” today

The good news is that Kathleen is very likely already on the airplane bound for Newark and then on to Mexico City. I had a small MSN Messenger exchange with her, the first time we have both been online simultaneously. She arrives quite late in Mexico and will have to take a hotel and catch the daily direct bus from Central del Norte terminal bound overnight to Barra de Navidad. It arrives at about 0530 and I shall move Vilisar into the lagoon at Barra. It’s a long way into the dock from the anchorage there. But I don’t think I want to subject Kathleen and her baggage to a night-time embarkation through the Melaque surf. That might be too much of a re-baptism into the cruising life again.

Vilisar in new colours

Just in time for Kathleen’s return, I have finished up the “spring” maintenance on Vilisar, by which I mean the annual paint-refresher and cosmetic update. Except for her spars and brightwork and a single long, teal-coloured accent stripe along the caprail, Vilisar is now an all-round white and ready for the tropics. The choice is of colour is definitely important down here. The heat absorption of even a light grey finish is much greater than white. A light blue can be almost effective. But I have taken the advice of one of the most practical and experienced cruisers and voyagers, Jack on the junk-rigged S/V Belle Via out of Comox.

“Sure,” he says, “If you want to spend a lot of time picking colours and trying over the years to match shade again while the UV fades it, go for nice colours and nuances. But straight white is the coolest for a wooden or any other vessel and you never have to mix colours!”

So, I followed his advice, trotted off to the Comex shop and brought home white enamel (matt). Comex is a manufacturer owned now, I think, by Akzo Nobel of The Netherlands and so should be of good quality. The paint has worked like a charm.

All the brightwork, hatchcovers, blocks, rudder, tiller, etc., received several coats of Cetol and at least coats of Cetol Gloss. The caprails, cabin sides and miscellaneous got a good coat of the remaining off-white ACE-Hardware paint. A new hardwood foot brace was affixed to the cockpit sole. The cockpit received a lot of attention where wood seams had dried out. These were filled and the whole area painted as part of the non-skid programme.

Applying non-skid on painted decks

The decks on a boat can rapidly turn into skating rinks unless something is done to remove the slipperiness. There are several ways to go about this. Bare teak is one way or unpainted wood of some other wood; fishing boats in B.C., for example, use fir but keep it wet with saltwater. All these bare woods have to be maintained too. Old merchant vessels and warships used bare wooden decks that were polished daily with pumice stone to keep them white and, one supposes, non-slippery.

Vilisar’s decks are made of red cedar planks laid parallel with the fore and aft line of the vessel (the alternative for a laid deck would be to make the planks curve to follow the line of the outer edge of the deck). Our decks are painted. When we got the boat in 2001, the decks were already painted. I cannot recall if they had received a non-skid treatment or had just dried out so much that they were not slippery. Anyway, I used a coat of enamel on the decks the first time I painted them myself. And, oh, my! Did they look beautiful! Unfortunately, the first time we went out on a sail, even the spray on the deck made it completely treacherous. It made no difference whatsoever whether I was barefoot or wearing rubber sandals. I could not stay in one spot on the foredeck without hanging on to something for dear life. Trying to accomplish anything like putting up or taking in sails was almost more than I could handle.

Soon afterwards I attempted to put a non-skid coating on it. All the old sailors told me that all I had to do was get some beach sand and use that. Of course, if I were a fool, I could separate myself from my money by purchasing non-skid sand from, say, West Marine. I trundled off to the beach and collected sand. I even washed it to get the salt off it. I tired both broadcasting in onto the freshly painted deck and I tried mixing it into the paint. The latter meant that I had to continually be stirring the paint to prevent the sand from sinking. This turned out to be a nuisance.

The result looked good at first. But after a while the sand had been first exposed and then worn away. I didn’t realise at the time that you first have to paint and scatter sand onto the wet paint as you go along. The next day you then paint over the sand to seal it in. And don’t use glossy, shiny enamel either.

I ashamedly bought 7 lbs. of “fine” silica sand at a marine supply store in Puerta Vallarta for about the equivalent of US$ 12, ashamedly because I still thought I could collect sand from the beach even though what I had seen here was quite fine. I now realise that some sand is gritty and some sand is smooth and what you need is the former. By spending the money that’s what I applied. The traditional alternative to sand is ground walnut shells. I saw the professional painters in Long Beach treat the large aft deck of a sport-fishing boat in this manner and it looked terrific. They gave me tips. They used two-part polyurethane paint too; expensive but good. They had purchased a whole bag of shells (about a bushel, I should estimate) and used only a small portion of it. They gave the rest away. I would have been quite pleased to have the shells for my non-skid project. But somebody tell me where on board I should carry a large bag of shells for a year or two until I do the deck again! I reluctantly passed. In the end the bag of shells went into the trash to be added to the hidden costs of having somebody else do your paintwork for you.

Paint maintenance on a wooden boat is an ongoing thing. If you don’t like it buy a boat of some other material or have somebody do the work for you. It should be noted however that wooden boats are generally much cheaper and custom-built boats even cheaper. So what you save on the initial investment for the vessel might make it worth your while to accept some painting and varnishing. I shall not even get into the discussion about the work involved in painting rust-bucket steel boats or tarting up plastic boats. I probably paint the boat form stem to stern and masthead to keel about once in every two years. The anti-fouling paint gets done at least every year, of course, as do some other heavy-traffic areas. Any surface that gets direct tropical noontime sun – decks, caprails, hatchcovers, etc. will need coating every year at least in the tropics. Our Cetol-coated spars are good for another year, I think. Last year I gave all the brightwork several coats of Cetol each as well as several gloss coats this year it just required one coat of each. I put five coats of Cetol and three of Gloss on the newly refinished and recaulked lazarette hatchcover. Looks super!

Here are some tips and observations on my non-skid job. First, even using “fine” silica sand, the decks are now very rough. After the first few days the soles of my feet are burning and sore. If I fall on this deck at sea I may have to be med-evacuated with serious abrasions! But I certainly should not be worried about sliding around on a wet deck at all! With the Comex matt exterior enamel that I used, I could paint, scatter sand and repaint 4-6 hours later. This is important if you are painting at anchor as I was and you cannot simply unload all the deck stuff off of the boat and do everything in one go. At anchor you move everything to one side of the boat, paint and do the other side the next day when the first part is dry. Two coats of the Comex enamel dried hard in one day while the ACE Hardware porch-paint I used took several days to become hard even though it was dry to the touch fairly quickly. Use kneepads or protectors to do non-skid or your knees will be meat. I also wore an old pair of cottons socks to protect my feet. If not too wet, start to paint early enough in the day before it gets too windy; this is probably less of a problem in a marina or a work yard since they are by nature normally more protected from the wind. Be aware that it will take twice as much paint for that last coat to go over the sand than the coat before it. Work the paint going on over the sand in many different directions to ensure a good coating.

I have tried throwaway brushes: the sponge ones will be shredded in no time, so forget them. The bristle throwaway brushes are all right, I guess, and I of course use them from time to time on small, one-off jobs. But they do not carry the paint well, you do a lot of dipping and dripping; you will be lucky if only your hands are covered in paint. Moreover, expect to get a lot of bristles in the paint. I used the same high-quality, 3-inch Purdy brush for all the paintwork this time round and was very pleased with it. Another advantage of working with only one colour is that you only need one brush and one batch of cleanup chemical. (I use ACE Hardware mineral spirits because I have lots of it on board to use in the petroleum lamps in the main cabin; it’s cheaper, burns cleaner; mineral spirits are easier to obtain than kerosene.) All through the renovations, I kept the brush in mineral spirits up to and including the heel. Before starting the next phase of work, I simply squeezed the brush out, rubbed it dry on an old rag, and got right on with the painting. It only took a few minutes at either end of the day. I regularly passed the dirty mineral spirits through a paint strainer into a new and large yoghurt-container. Tonight, when I pack all my painting gear back into the portable paint locker that lives under the cockpit seat, I shall clean the brush well in mineral spirits, rub out the excess on a rag, and then wash the brush a couple of times in warm soapy water. I have heard of rubbing a bit of petroleum jelly into the bristles, the heel especially, but have not tried it. I have come to like this brush and want to keep it soft and useful for years. There was no bristle loss at all despite the rough treatment on the sanded surface.
Carpentry work in Mexico
Ever since we capsized the dinghy off the Pacific coast of Baja last February and lost the removable parts, I have been make-shifting. Finally, in La Paz I made a new seat for the dinghy and simple screwed a wooden cover over the forward locker and the daggerboard hole. The latter was in place of a plug that slid into the slit when the daggerboard itself was not in use. This cover never worked well when we were towing the dinghy since the pressure would force sea water up into the forward section of the dinghy until the boat became bow heavy and would jaw like crazy or race down a wave to try and catch Vilisar. We would have to heave to and bail the tender out.

I start off a day or two ago to find a lumber yard (madereria) so I can make a new plug myself or, alternatively, to find a carpenter who can make it for me at a reasonable price. While having a coffee with friends at one of the sidewalk cafes in Malarky, I get into a discussion with Adriano, the manager, who is curious to know why I am carrying a dinghy daggerboard (to use as a model, is the answer). After a little discussion he tells me his brother is a carpenter and, if I want, he will take it around to him this evening and have the plug and the daggerboard back the morning after tomorrow. We agree on a maximum price without my approval and I have the day free to paint. When I pick it up yesterday, it is nicely done in a tropical wood called in Spanish parota but which I cannot find in my Spanish-English dictionary. It looks rather like raw teak and the carpenter made it in this since the item will be in the water a lot. I am very pleased to have this done at last and find that it only costs me Peso 100 (about US$ 10) including materials. I didn’t have the fun of dealing with the carpenteria myself. But I had fun talking to Adriano, a very nice guy and I certainly got my new plug faster. This morning I gave the raw wood a good coat of sealant and later, after sanding it lightly, I shall paint it.


CONTACT TO JOE AND SANDRA MAY IN ALASKA

Ever since we acquired Vilisar in 2001, I have been hoping for a contact to Joe and Sandra May who owned the boat for a decade and did so much work on it. In fact I get occasional emails form Joe who lives now in Trapper Creek, Alaska, where he is a musher and dogsled racer. He himself won the Iditarod in the early 1980’s. But each time that I try to reply to him that is the end of the exchange. So I am not even sure that he is receiving my emails.

One day at the internet café I look his telephone number up on Google and give him a call using SKYPE. Sandra answers. Joe, she tells me, has just left with others on a longer trip by snowmobile into the interior. Despite the fact that I can hardly hear her, we have a nice initial conversation about Vilisar and she gives me her email address too. But I guess I shall have to call her again and double-check the email address because my test message could not be delivered. I have a raft of questions about what they did together with Vilisar and a lot of technical questions about the boat including how many hours were on the Lister engine when they sold the boat. I shall just have to be persistent, I guess.