We had a late start on this simi-good day, only a slight chance of rain. We pull the heat gun and scraper out to finish the stripping of the varnish. Not 5 minutes into working, actually probably 3 minutes in Shannon slips and runs her bare foot into my hot sharp metal scraper. Now there are lots of ways to avoid this kind of accident, namely wearing any kind of footwear, but it happened anyways. I looked at the injury it had cut open the bottom of her “index” toe. It wasn’t bleeding bad but was extremely deep. I was concerned about stitches and tetanus. I then asked Shannon when her last tetanus shot was, she said she couldn’t remember the last time she got a booster, not a good thing to hear when your are supposed to have one every 5 years. Well off to urgent care we went. About a 15 minute drive then about a 30 minute wait. The nurse met us and flushed the wound, then called the doctor in. Doc said it can be glued back together. Doc administered the glue with a prompt tetanus shot. Then I had to hear about how much her arm hurts for the next 3 days.
We worked off and on with the varnish stripping for the next two days and last night we finished all of the final sanding with 220 grit. This morning we woke up and did the last spot sanding, filled a few random screw holes with epoxy. Then taped and wiped the surface for our first coat of Cetol Natural Teak.
We applied using a method from of friends on S/V Horizon using a $2 cabinet roller tray combo with a 1.5” foam brush. One person rolls and the other tips. Makes the whole process go way quicker, with at least Cetol the finished product is great! Thank you HORIZON!!!!
I rolled and Shannon tipped and we finished the whole coat in about 45 minutes. Now two more coats of the natural then three coats of gloss. We will then have a finish that wont need to be touched up until next June!
Washington is sure nice when the sun is out! Today was a sunny 76 Degrees and I would have sworn I was still in Ventura, CA. We are going to get another coat on tomorrow then on Monday we are going to take off to some close by anchorage hopefully, then apply our third coat. While coating the coach roof I want to install our two 75watt solar panels to get them out of the way. I’m also going to swap out our 35lb CQR to our 33lb bruce for our primary. I’m not that happy about the bruce being only 33lb but I like it better than CQRs. Contemplating whether to buy my secondary “new Anchor” first because I cant afford the Spade S120 that I want (painful $1000).
Shannon is heading back to California on Thursday for a family emergency so I will be alone on the boat for a week. I think I’m going to knock out the coachroof teak deck panels. I need to cut out the old black caulking then re caulk and make it look new again. Pretty big project but I’m ready for it. If it’s going well I’ll move on and do the main decks. For now that is all, I think I’m going to film our sail on Monday and put a little video together for the followers!