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Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

General Sailing Forum

We're finally in the water again!

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Initially Posted - 06/06/2011 : 22:05:04

This weekend we finally got Sirius Lepak back in the water. It's been a long 19 months(!) out of the water. Back in November of 2009 we took her out of the water for what I expected would be a winter of scraping the bottom and putting on new paint, a few smaller projects, and the installation of our "new" 32 gallon water bladder. Hah.

The de-barnacle & mussel-ing took a couple of weeks to get most of them off. All the mussels came off, but the barnacles are pernicious and the glue they use has got to be epoxy grade at least. I elected to soda blast the hull figuring it would only take me a few weekends to do. Of course this was with my rose colored goggles on. I had no compressor, no air tools, no soda blaster, and lots of enthusiasm. I did have a 10 gallon air tank that I blew up at my local gas station. I found a soda blaster at Harbor Freight, hooked it up to my 10 gallon tank and must have cleaned a good square foot with, it. Ewww...maybe this wasn't going to be so easy.

I found a compressor on CraigsList that looked like it would fit the bill, it did, but just barely, well truly it was woefully inadequate, but I didn't understand why until much later. Needless to say, this two to three weekend task was going to take a bit longer. Like four months. I finally got it finished, but I never want to see a soda blaster again.

We painted the hull with the intentions of putting the boat in the water in the late summer, early fall. Plans change, I started a new job and was soon working 10-12 hour days (thankfully that's over), and there wasn't time for the boat. Then we were headed to SE Asia for a long vacation and we couldn't see putting the boat in the water for the winter, when we'd probably pull it right back out to finish the other project that'd been pushed off, so we kept it on the side of the house. That meant that this spring, we had to do a scuff coat on the hull, and paint it again (4 coats now), so we did that.

We never got the water bladder installed, and had to replace the weight of the lead I'd removed in preparation for it. So last weekend I procured 150lbs of weight machine weights from a shelved project at work (we have pallets of them) and Rita & I hoisted them up into the bow for ballast. The water bladder will eventually add 260 lbs of weight, so we're riding a bit bow high right now, but nothing too exciting.

Along the way we did the following littler projects:
Clean up the mast track where the mast raising bridle had abraded the track with the main halyard's u-bolt.
Fixed the leaks on both deck organizers. Drill out & over fill with epoxy, re-drill & mount.
Clean off some residue from adhesive on one of the organizers and from where the velcro for our cockpit cushions used to attach.
Several small projects with my new emergency tiller, varnish it, add a autopilot pin, as well as shave it down to make it fit the stainless fitting on the original tiller.
Have another dock roller piece made up to go on the left side of a dock instead of the right.
Add plastic grommets to our new jib bag for drainage.
Removed and replaced the hatch track slides (again)
Adjust the throttle & gear linkage on the Tohatsu controls (less successful than I wanted, but I'll live with it).
Changed the oil on the Tohatsu.
Cleaned & re-rigged the LifeSling
Added new composite keelboards and stainless fittings for the L-brackets on the trailer.

I'm really glad we're back in the water. I'm so looking forward to actually sailing instead of doing projects on the boat!

David
C-250 Mainsheet Editor

Sirius Lepak
1997 C-250 WK TR #271 --Seattle area Port Captain --

Edited by - on

redeye
Master Marine Consultant

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3476 Posts

Response Posted - 06/07/2011 : 04:15:34

Feels like fun is on the horizon. I got to see my boat's PO this weekend, and he was the kinda guy that would use a boat for 20 years without any work on it. Easy with a Freshwater boat. PO is a Flyboy. Great influence, he uses something until it fails. Fun person to be around. I like to work on boats as much as use them, but I try to take breaks from the projects and just go out and party.

Great to hear you got your bottom done... that is a job.