November 1, 2013-Headed to the Boat Yard (Updated-Again)

Today we move the boat to another marina in the Cartagena area where we will have some work done including new deck paint, new interior (forepeak) paint, antifouling, and other small projects. We will move into an apartment on the beach near Old Town while this is completed. We expect it to take about two weeks.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Cartagena

UPDATE-Nov. 9!

New Deck Paint

The boat is parked in Pescara Santa Clara while we wait for Festival Week to be over and the boat yard workers return to their responsibilities (talk about bad planning, we didn't realize that almost every worker in Cartagena would be on holiday just at the time when we wanted to get this project going!)

Fortunately our friend Alvaro knew a good painting team who would work anyhow and we put them to work on the deck. The sanding was tough but that's done and the primer too, and now anti-skid texture and polyurethane deck paint are being applied. Meanwhile Judy and I have been working inside on another area needing sanding and painting. What a mess!

Friends visit in the apartment

At least we have a clean place to stay while this is going on; we rented a nice apartment in town for a couple of weeks although we aren't positive that the boat will be finished by the time we have to give up the apartment.

We'll see.

UPDATE-Nov. 15!

Finished

Today we re-launched Wings on schedule. Other than a bit of drama when we got ourselves locked out of the apartment before we had all of our stuff out, and then got stuck in traffic and almost missed the re-launch appointment, everything has gone well. The boat looks great with its new bottom paint and the hull is in really good condition with virtually no blisters this time; even the keel came out perfectly. We even had time to get the topsides cleaned, it still shines four years after our last paint job.

One unplanned job which was completed I think will turn out to be a bonus. I'd been wondering if there was something we could do about our worn out propeller. We've probably got 40,000 miles on the boat since we last had this old folding Martec rebuilt in New Zealand in 1998 and its been giving us some trouble (not always unfolding when needed) not to mention that its really noisy as it rattles around down there like a can full of rocks. When I inspected it closely yesterday I realized it was shot; the clearances are all well above optimal and it would be a wonder if it would last much longer. But for 20 years we've been carrying the original propeller in the spares locker, and in 1998, when the primary prop was rebuilt in Auckland, we had the spare rebuilt too. Its an odd propeller, 21 inches in diameter while the normal prop is 15 inches, but the pitch is the same. It was made longer to get a benefit under the IOR rule and the long blades were never perfect. But now I decided that even with its long, windmill like, blades, it might be better than the one we had on. I dug it out and in an hour I had the primary propeller off and the spare one installed. It looks good and more importantly, feels good too; everything is tight and smooth.

So far we've only used it on the motor back from Manzanillo Marina Club, and other than backing up (it won't take a lot of power in reverse until you get some speed on, so quick stops are out of the question) it seems pretty good.

Click here for plenty of photos from this yard period, including the propeller.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Cartagena