It was almost spring

Well spring almost arrived this week I set to on Monday to finish painting the various areas of the topsides where I had carried out repairs I had previously primed and undercoated them last year before the winter weather put a stop to any further work. I plugged in the random orbital sander and switched on, dead as a dodo it appears that the local lowlifes had broken into the adjacent industrial estate in search of anything worth removing and had cut the power to the boatyard so I ended up having to hand sand before applying a coat of Toplac Mediterranean White which appears to be a pretty good match to the existing. I had planned to do the second coat on Wednesday but low and behold we appear to be back to winter again cold and wet all day fortunately I had a plan 'B' I had finished painting the front panel for the wet locker in the heads so I got it fitted into place so that I could measure up for the hardwood trim pieces for each side these will be a homework job to sand and varnish.

Wet locker front panel

I replaced the engine heat exchanger drain cock which was leaking slightly when I test ran the engine I taken it home, stripped it and lapped it in with some fine grinding paste it is just a simple taper plug cock the repair of which I have covered before in an earlier post.

I then moved on to the heads locker opening which I had previously carried out some fibreglass repairs to I sanded back all the areas where I had filled various holes and the infill to the top of the opening.

After sanding

The remaining hole is for the shower drain pump switch, the two ends of the opening have been left a bit uneven after they were cut out and looking at the Yacht Grot post of a Moody 33 for sale on Youtube the width of the locker doors seems to indicate that this probably dates from the original construction. I had been in two minds whether or not to do something about it and as I had brought the jig saw down with me, just in case, I decided to tidy them up but lo and behold we still have no power so I had to use a hacksaw with the blade turned 90 degrees and do it by hand.

Ends of the opening tidied up

Today turned out to be another miserable wet day no chance of any external painting so I decided to get on with gel coating the front of the locker the weather was just about warm enough and by warming the resin by putting the tin in a bucket of warm water and using the maximum 4% catalyst I applied two coats of gel coat followed by a third coat of gel coat with 2% wax added to form flocoat as I had previously done in the galley. Once it has fully cured I shall sand back with wet and dry to leave a smooth finish I don't know if it is me or not but trying to get a smooth finish applying gel coat with a brush is pretty well impossible it will therefore take a bit of sanding back.

After gel coating

In between coats of gel coat I stripped and lapped in the exhaust manifold drain cock which had also been leaking this one was going to be awkward to remove, possibly having to remove the exhaust manifold to do it, so I did it in place hoping that I didn't drop any small bits under the engine, there is not much room under there as the bilge suction hose and the raw water hose run under there plus the fact there is very little room between the bottom of the engine sump and the bottom of the boat and fortunately when I dropped the inevitable small washer it fell on the outboard side of the engine bed and was thus easily retrieved.