Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.
I've scraped off all the paint from her hull and now am sanding the residue off. I am about 75% done now, and thankfully alot of the blister repairs from the past do not have to be redone. Some of them do, however, so hopefully this weekend I'll be able to dig them out and fill them. If I get far enough along, hopefully next week I'll be able to begin to paint her.
Once that's complete I'll start examining the rigging. It seems to look okay, but I'm going to try to raise the mast and get everything set up on the hard, so I'll know something about what I'm doing when I take her to the marina.
-Dave
I'll post some pictures
1979 Catalina 25 "Pretty Penny" #1166 Palm Bay, Florida
The first one is me scraping. You can see that the paint is mostly off under the water line. The waterline was the toughest as the paint "fused" with it.
In the second one you can see where I had to put a corral around her to keep my girlfriends horses from chewing on her. Horses are alot like dogs...they like to mess with everything.
Dave, One of the handiest tools I've found for working around, and in, fiberglass, is a Dremel tool. For cleaning out hull blisters the round-head bit works great. Kind of works like a dentists drill. it will make short work of those "cavities" .
I have a dremel tool with a round cutting bit on it. I am going to start using that hopefully this weekend since I should be done sanding this evening.
The hull looks much nicer since I sanded it off. And like I said before, luckily not all of the filler holes have to be redone.
As a 79 I am sure pretty Penny has had a long history and multiple owners. Can you spot a common characteristic about the fills that need to be redone? That blister thing caught the world off guard at first but the repair technique has been nailed down since at least the mid 80's. I am a lake sailor, (fresh water) and I know Jerry from the nationals. The hull looks bad to me. It looks like there are hundreds of blister shapes. Is your scraping just leaving areas that are coincidentally round, or are those all blister repairs? If those are all blister repairs then I am concerned that you can see them at all. They should be under at least 10 mil of epoxy barrier coat. You should not be able to see them. Is there a barrier coat on the hull? If not I think you need to recognize that Pretty Penny is blister prone and you need to plan on putting one on before you paint. Barrier coats are not optional. Note that it should cover the boot stripe, no sense in leaving it exposed to wave action at the slip.
PS This is what using baking soda does, it is called soda blasting for obvious reasons. They use regular blasting equipment with different orifice sizes than the sand equipment. The equipment is small and travels, it leaves no bio issues.
Here is a view after the hull was sanded. There are some blisters, but not too many.
I didn't get finished with the sanding because I had to devise a plan to get the boat off the rails. I ended up using my jeep pulling the boat over to one side, then using a prop to hold it up while I dropped the rail. It seems to work okay. I'll try refilling the previous repairs and painting this week.
I did buy some barrier coat and plan to put that on before I put the antifouling paint on. I want to make sure I do it right so I NEVER have to do it again. :) Of course one day I'm sure I will, but I'd like to imagine that this is a one time deal. Maybe next time I can just paint it rather than stripping it all off again.
Excellant job Dave. I hope you meant stabilized the boat with your jeep so you could drop the bunk not pull it over so the weight was on the one wing of the keel. Make sure the blisters you grind out are dry before you do the repair. When the 25-30 were done in 88 she sat for couple of weeks for them to dry. The old girl sure is looking good!!!!!
She apparently was out of the water for about a year before I got her so she's pretty dry. I've never seen her in the water.
I used my Jeep to pull her over to one rail to take her weight off the other one so I could drop it. I then used a prop to help support her because the way the trailer is configured the keel is only supported by the center, so the "wings" have nothing under them. This way there is no way for them to support her.
Thanks for all the support. Today I finished grinding out alot of the starboard side blister repairs, plus some new blisters that were starting to form. I'm going to try to finish the starboard side tomorrow and start filling the holes.
I'll keep you guys updated as I make progress. I want to try to get her in the water within a month.
Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.