The Focsul Refit

The first step in getting sand up onto the deck of the boat was rigging a safe way to enable the kids to do it independently. Tamer and Uncle Raoul look on as Blayde, Valin & Drake figure out their stations and responsibilities. All told, they hauled about 500 pounds of sand aboard for interior blasting in the Focsul, Cargo Hold, and Main Salon.

Now, half of the sand is ready to haul down to a pallet to be screened for a second use.

This is the newly discovered "Void" under the recently enclosed anchor locker. We cut out the triangular inspection plate to access it. Just for reference, the ceiling of this space is the floor of the anchor locker. We realized very quickly that this was definitely a candidate for sandblasting. Sandblasting, although effective; is very messy!! The only other way to clear the area of rust, is to grind, and at the time we did not have an air powered Die Grinder. The space really was too small to get a grinder in there.

Valin getting the area ready for sandblasting. The red machine in the foreground is the sandblaster, which is powered by the air compressor. He has also placed boards across the bilges for more "lying on the job" comfort, and a light was rigged in the void.

I gotta hand it to him, the man can blast!! Here he is all suited up, with his fresh air intake coming from the leaf blower on deck, through the silver hose.

Here is the photographic proof.... Tamer Smyth was caught on camera today, lying down on the job!
Truth:
He did a great job, and it was a horribly uncomfortable, dirty, hot area to work on when we did this. Thanks Baby!

The void; sandblasted and ready for light sanding, osphoing, and painting.

'Angels were singing'

~angelically~

It is hard to visualize with just this picture, but the base for the mast step, had the worst rust scaling that we had found anywhere inside the boat. Unfortunately, because it was such an awkward area to work in, it took Tamer and I most of 2 days to sandblast it and prepare it for painting. I would have to say that it was my least favorite job so far....

The next stage of repair was to get any and all rust off of the interior of the hull. If there happened to be any thick scaly rust on the surface, it worked best to use an air scaler first. As I am doing here.... Then came the grinding, osphoing, ect, ect, ect.... Until.....

The painting crew came along.
Here I am happily mixing amerlock 400 to apply to all of the spot repairs in the focsul.

I thought the spot painting would take only a couple of hours, but it ended up taking about 6. Then I applied all the coal tar to the bilges..... And now we all know how much I love 'coal tar'......

This was the first opportunity we had to use our new airless paint sprayer. We were a little nervous, mostly because of the cost of amerlock if any were to be wasted ($70.00/gallon). It ended up working way better than we had imagined, with Tamer's painting expertize, of course. It applied a nice thick, even coat, and we ended up with maybe $10.00 of wasted paint.

The angels are singing again :-) Here is the Focsul, finished and beautiful beyond our wildest dreams!! It ended up taking 2 gallons and about 2 hours. Way, way less paint and time than it would have been if done by hand.