Behind Schedule

One thing I’ve learned as a sailor with a job is that schedules ruin trips. When you only have a 1 or 2 week vacation from work, marina reservations, meet-ups, etc, the schedule forces you to sail in less than perfect conditions.

With this trip, one of my objectives is NOT to have a schedule. Reality is, you can’t avoid all schedules.

I was hoping to have most of the work done in the spring and was hoping / planning on launching mid to late June. The first hard date we had coming up was July 4th.

My mother lives in Boyne City, Michigan on Lake Charlevoix. She was having a 4th of July family party and we were planning to be there. Yes, right out of the shoot and we had a hard date schedule.

Before we could leave, we needed a bottom job. I had commissioned the boat yard to soda blast, barrier coat, and finally pain the bottom. The soda basting was initially scheduled for Fall of 2018. The rest would be done in the spring of 2019.

There were scheduling issues and the yard couldn’t get the soda blasting done before the snows came in 2018. The soda blasting wasn’t done until this June.

A couple of coats of paint can hide issues, and our bottom was no different. We discovered problems on the rudder and near the bow thruster. All of which needed to be repaired before starting the barrier coat and paint.

For those of you in Northern Illinois, you know this has been a wet and cold spring. Our boat is outside and it can’t be painted if rain, fog, or temperatures below 51 degrees are scheduled.

Sue and I took on the task of re-varnishing the wood on deck. Unfortunately, this was more than a yearly touch-up maintenance coat. We needed to take it back to bare wood and start over again. I knew this was going to be a lot of work, but I had no idea.

These are the reasons we’re running a little behind. Good news, the barrier coat is complete, the first coat of bottom paint is on, and Sue and I are about 80% done with the varnish.

Here are some pictures of what’s going on: