Alberg 30 Refit: Happy 4th of July 2015

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Independence Day, America!

This picture was taken May 22nd while on the ferry. I have actually seen a few fireworks shows this year while running the ball park ferry. I hope everyone has a safe a fun 4th. I wish we could be with friends and family but I have been called in to run an extra ferry to handle tonight's fireworks show in Norfolk.

On to boat work update:

This what I started with yesterday, a scraped starboard side

 And this is how the boat looked after about 4 hrs of sanding! 

I have question all you Good Old Boat guys, there appears to be a red gelcoat  stripe all the way around the boat at the original waterline? The boot stripe on the boat appears to be 3-4 inches higher than the original waterline. I heard that some Alberg 30 sterns appeared to sit low in the water. Our Sal did not. She sat quite nicely; I wonder if this is because someone altered the waterline. 

Because I did not want to get too dirty working on the bottom I decided to take more stuff off the boat in preparation for work inside. Salacia has a small volume interior compared to some 30ft boats and I am still amazed at how much stuff can be stored! I feel like we've already offloaded so much and there's still more to be done, 

Work continues, and I am hoping that the nastiest part of the job is just about over, as I finish up the bottom paint removal process. I will then begin repairs on the bottom in preparation for her barrier coat.

Have a safe and relaxing holiday weekend!

Alberg 30 Refit: Bottom paint removal continued and hull blisters

This evening I finished up the nasty dirty paint removal task on the port side of the hull. During the last few months I have been pretty busy with work, family and other projects and I was becoming frustrated and worried that the refit would never progress. I had piddled around here and there but no major tasks were getting done. Fortunately, this has changed. I made it a priority to get this refit rolling.

I had been using a 6" sander to remove the paint. That thing made all kinds of dust. It removed the paint but was a bear to use. I decided to try scraping a majority of the paint. This turned out to be a great decision. In about 4 hours time I had scraped almost the entire side. 

After scraping a majority of the paint, sanding with a 5" Bosch orbital sander made getting to the gelcoat quite easy. Another 4 hours and I had 2/3 of the port side hull down to the gelcoat.

Working away at little bit at a time, I put in 2 hours last night.

Using the trailer as a bench and stool has come in quite handy.

Another angle of the sanded hull

Here's where the bad news starts. My Alberg is full of blisters (water intrusion), This is a good example of one. From what I can tell this is not a new problem and one that someone tried to repair long ago...about 6 layers of bottom paint ago to be exact, so maybe 20 years ago....who knows???

You can see the hull issues better in this photo. That discolored area which extends all the way to the stern seemed to be some severe crazing, and is full of blisters

The red dots appear to be old blisters that were filled and the other dots are new blisters. 

As you can see from the pictures I am making progress. I seemed to have opened a can of worms here on the hull. I surely want to fix the issues as best I can, but I also want to be sensible about the repair. I am devising a plan now to use West System epoxy for the repairs, and until then I'll be sanding the starboard side. More to follow!