REPAIRING THE DECKS
Golfito, Costa Rica, Sunday, January 31, 2010

It’s the last day of January 2010 and Vilisar has been in Costa Rica for over a month. Kathy flew out on Christmas Eve to work on a musical in Frankfurt for a couple of months and visit her parents in Baltimore and the way back. I stay with the boat and have a To Do List of nearly fifty items. Safe to say, it seems that I have completed almost nothing.

First, it took a while after Kathleen left to get adjusted to living alone again. And of course there was Christmas and New Years to get through. Yes, even cruisers get together for an ersatz family Christmas dinner. This year it took place for us at Land & Sea (TierraMar) virtual marina. Pretty small crowd, but quite multi-culti and cosmopolitan with Canadians, Americans, Danes, Peruvians, Costa Ricans and et cetera.

On the top of my TO-Do List was the job of pumping out the contaminated diesel fuel from the large tank in the engine room. It took quite a while to find somebody. In the best Costa Rican tradition, they bid three times as much as is fair and then get some poor sod from Nicaragua to do the actual dirty work at a fraction of the money. Well, I got the price down we got the job done. If you have any doubts about whether microbes can live in a pure (i.e., waterless) diesel environment, contact me and I shall be glad to give you the graphic description of what it looks and smells like. Keep adding your biocide to prevent any reoccurrence. And don’t forget that the jerry jugs on deck (which probably have not been treated with biocide) will grow organisms that will pass at least in part through your Baja filter. There are those who say that biocide is actually bad for the diesel engine itself. A better solution would be an enzyme additive. This approach is used to clean up oil spills. Basically, the enzyme eats the microbes and when there are no more microbes, the enzyme disappears. Everything passes in a neutral way through the filters and the engine. That sounds like good news to me. I was told that you could buy some at Abernathy in Panamá, but I intend to order a bunch of bottles from the States and have them shipped through Airbox. (The same company makes a diesel additive that is essentially ethanol. If you have fibreglass fuel tanks the ethanol will first dissolve the epoxy and feed it bit by bit into your engine to glog everything up permanently. Eventually your fibreglass tanks (being stripped over time if its epoxy) will delaminate and your boat will be flooded with diesel.)

Along with replacing the bobstay and boomkin whisker shrouds with galvanised chain (the lengths were cut from the long spare anchor chain I carry in the bilge), I have been addressing other smaller issues too. I put several coats of Cetol on nearly everything except the mast. I have run out of Cetol but at least most of the external brightwork at deck level has been treated. It’s surprising how much there actually is once you start! Some of it was in very bad shape; that tropical sun takes a heavy toll of all surfaces and coatings - and of sails and canvas, as well, of course. Getting this Cetolling done would normally take only a couple of days even with 24 hours between coats. But, of course, you cannot be outside applying Cetol in the intense sunshine or when it’s dewy in the morning or when it’s threatening or actually raining. I try sanding early in the morning (finish outside work by 0900 or 0930 at the latest), and then apply Cetol after 1600, having protected the surfaces from the afternoon sun, if I can, so they are not so hot that it will cause the Cetol to blister. We have had heavy tropical rain on some afternoons and the threat of it on many others. Tim of TierraMar says Costa Rica is at present actually having a drought (due probably to the El Niño effects this year). But, I certainly wouldn’t want it any wetter.

The major project has been to strip Vilisar’s decks and cabin roof of decades of old paint. No problem! You just get an angle cutter with the appropriate rough sanding discs and get to work. This first of all implies that you have an angle grinder (I do). It also implies you have a source of 110v power (I don’t ever since some divers blew our 500 Watt inverter with their heavy-duty compressor). We also don’t have a gasoline generator, so I am forced to go begging. Jean-Yves on L’Or de Temp lent me his, however. Thank you, Jean.

I also find local help in the form of Chiso (short for Francisco), a local fisherman who mostly works at the machine and mechanics shop along the waterfront. He is available for a bit of weekend work and arrives with a huge angle grinder, for which I have already purchased sanding discs at the Chinese Ferratería. After I pick him up at 0600 and row out to Vilisar, he tries a few spots. But, we very soon come to the conclusion that the silica sand embedded as non-skid in the enamel paint will eat up discs in no time flat. He picks up a putty knife and starts lifting. “This is faster than grinding. Mehor!” Chiso says. He spends two whole days lifting paint, and, when it is basically off he grinds it off with the angle grinder. He also repeatedly states that ‘El sol está brava!’, which means the sun is angry, which means the sun is damned hot. I try rigging temporary awnings, but it is a losing game. He never stops working though, except for a large glass of water at frequent intervals. He also tries one of our warm beers with the rice and veggies he has brought for his lunch, but announces it to be bad for his stomach. The second day he arrives with a thermos cooler full of ice and a few beers. I add a few to keep things topped up. Cold beer, I have to admit, is the one thing I really miss being without refrigeration.

Anyway, by the end of day two, all the two-inch thick red cedar deck planking has been exposed. I stop frequently to admire the carpentry skills of George Friend, the man who built Vilisar. It’s a piece of art in its own way. The seams are all still in good shape except in one small section. I use filler before heading off to Pinturas Sur to buy paints. First of course I have asked a few people about procedures and materials. But, of course, nobody has a wooden boat down here. They all recommend two-part polyurethane. But that is too rigid for a wooden boat, I believe, even one as stoutly-built as Vilisar. I decide for traditional exterior enamel with fine sand sprinkled as non-skid. Of course, if I can get it.

Considering that we are really in the sticks here, I am surprised that there is such a good paint supplier. Pinturas Sur is a Central American chain and they have a broad range of their own coatings, additives and related materials. The staff are knowledgeable and helpful. I can’t tell how good the paints are, but they seem all right so far. Not overly expensive, either. U.S.$ 30 a gallon for enamel.

A heavy rainsquall comes up on the afternoon that we finally strip the decks to bare wood. I take it in stride, and give everything a good washing using some degreaser in the bucket as well. I reckon the hot sun the next day will dry things out rapidly. I was right.

The first thing to do is to sand the wood with 180 grit, according to the label on the can. I decide to apply two thinned-down coats of white wood primer. This implies sanding, and I get to work with the electric palm-sander running off the gasoline generator. With the foredeck and side decks sanded, the generator decides to pack it in. Several days of analysis and work by Jena-Yves and a mechanic, Alex, off a Canadian sailboat, the problem has not been rectified. Meanwhile, I try some hand sanding, and in two stages finally get one thin-ish coat of white wood primer on the bare wood. Now it can rain, I guess.

I go round begging for the use of a generator and get support from two young guys on the last legs of their circumnavigation. They are from British Columbia, though one immigrated there from South Africa. In exchange, I lend them our oil extraction doo-hickey and the MapTech book of charts for the Pacific coast to San Diego. I think they are leaving tomorrow or Tuesday, so I hope we can get the cabin roof done by then.

Chiso is ready at the dock at 0700 this morning, and starts right in lifting paint using the trusty putty knife. He sharpens it using the grinder discs, for which we start the excellent Honda generator. Parts of the cabin roof are in very bad shape, starboard-sides especially, although I am not sure why one side should be worse then the other. As we lift paint, it appears that it has been fibre-glassed at some point. Underneath we find canvas, which has been painted and impregnated with something. But, what? I must call Joe May in Alaska to ask what he used for paint. Maybe it’s actually canvas saturated with epoxy paint of some sort. Some paints are very unsociable, and don’t live well with their new neighbours. You certainly don’t want to apply the wrong stuff on the wrong base and watch the whole thing turn to a gooey mess that has to be cleaned off to start again.

Of course, now I have a completely new painting problem? Man! Sometimes I really hate boats! I suppose you could paint enamel over epoxy paint, if that is what it is; we did it on the dinghy. In fact, that’s what Dieter aboard S/V Amazon 1 recommends after applying a suitable primer for fibreglass. Chiso says I should go to Ferretaria Flores and get Unipar primer. Well, that makes me feel better! Lots of opinions. None of them in agreement.

There are a few more boats here than there were early in January, many just passing through. I met a Canadian boat called S/V Amazon, (Dieter), a sturdy looking vessel and in fine shape (I notice these things when my own boat is a mess). Turns out Dieter had his own yacht production company in Surrey, British Columbia. He was sympathetic to my problems and amazed we were doing all this work at anchor and not in a marina or haul-out yard. Yes, well… Then there is a large English boat with two young guys, a Canadian and a Swede) as crewmen for the pacific crossing (hired through www.findacrew.com). Jean-Yves, of course, and a German cat called S/V Fee. The German word ‘Fee’ means ‘fairy’, but most people think it is a comment on the excessive charges by marina operators and government officials in Latin America. Norbert is a professor of something-or-other in Mannheim and wants to leave his boat somewhere safe. He thought he would have to go to San Diego, but I pointed out that Mexico, although definitively in the hurricane belt, has sturmfreie marinas in Puerta Vallarta, Mazatlan, La Paz and Guaymas/San Carlos. He was sceptical, but after researching, told me he was now very interested. “And Mexico is much, much cheaper than marinas in Central America, and have a quite reasonable approach to temporarily importing one’s boat.” Nicaragua or Guatemala are also good alternatives: cheaper; no customs problems for longer-term stays; less rain and lightening than Panamá or Costa Rica.

As the morning progresses, Chiso makes good progress with his putty knife. I have always assumed that over the wooden coach-house roof there would be canvas that had been painted. But, to my great surprise, it looks like fibreglass roving. By noon, he has finished one side including removing all the caulking to the brightwork (handholds and wooden trim), and in one or two spots cutting accidentally through the fibreglass cloth. I can repair this with epoxy. More, importantly, I shall now have to re-think how I am to paint the coach-house roof. Enamel doesn’t seem the right thing. But, I am as usual in over my head and will now have to seek advice. Maybe Dieter, the boat-builder, will have a couple of good ideas.

As Mark Twain said, “Life is just one thing after another.”