Huffin and buffin

An awful lot of labour has gone into Seascape's top sides following an infinite number of bumps and grazes, some of that labour was unfortunately not always of the highest standard. 

Phil has spent some time surveying the crazes and cracks along the topsides, probing and grinding them back to find all sorts of fillers have been used to fill the dinks.  

Dink discovery

Nothing escapes the eagle eyed Phil, he can glance at a hull and homes in on the unusual ripple and talks of laminate "grinning" through the gelcoat and can see a colour change in the gel from a thousand yards. Consequently every inch of the topsides is being checked, and like a surgeon , where there is infection the wound is cleaned , debrided and repaired properly using laminations of glass fibre and epoxy followed by layers of gelcoat. Layers and layers of gelcoat are applied to create a basis for rubbing them all down.  

Layers on layers of gelcoat

The rubbing down of gelcoat follows a well practiced protocol, the hors d'ouvre being 280 grit wet n dry which is used to thoroughly cut back and fair the hull often with a long board to smooth out the dents and bulges left by less concerned repeairers of the past historic and returning the hull to it's designed curves. Following the heavy cutting comes the start of the main course of finessing the gel by smoothing it using 400 and 600 grit which is held in the hand and rhythmically guided along the hull in a specific and well rehearsed fore and aft motion using the palm of the hand to hold the paper, never the fingers because they leave imperfect ridges which can be seen from afar with a trained eye. The application of soapy water acts as a lubricant as long sweeps of the hand horizontally are timed and spaced to never leave a gap, each sweep of the hand is followed by a tweaking dance of the opposite arm crossing the body in an exercise that is aerobic and burns calories as fast as any gym. We are not done yet as we continue to remove the ridges caused by the cutting by rubbing down with ever finer papers as we traverse 1200 grit and finally finish off with 2000 grit, again used wet and with the same tweaking motion carried out while balanced precariously on a scaffold blank some 5ft in the air! At this point the hull starts to provide payback and a shine starts to appear, but we are not done yet, 2000 grit is followed by cutting compound courtesy of 3m applied by rag and then driven in lazy figure of eights by a lambs wool bonnet on an electric buffer. Finally we apply polish with a cloth, wait for it to dry and then wipe off leaving a lustre like you have never seen on anything less than Bentley.    It's a labour of love but the results are stunning.  

Shines like a diamond

   

Polish

Comparing the old yellowed finish to the repaired and repolished leaves a stunning impression, on the next photo you can see the unpolished starboard side in the left and the polished and repaired hull on the right.  

Dull yellow vs shiny white

Next job is for me to start work on the upper blue stripe which is cracked and bruised in a few places, this needs to go through the 400 grade part of the process in order that it can be covered with vinyl wrap, this will take a bit of time but cleanliness is next to godliness as the wrap is only a few microns thick and any blemishes on the surface to which it is applied are I am assured , going to be visible. So get the elbow grease revved up, here I come .  

Quarter shined up too, beam still to cut back once cured

Today I turned up late to the boat after a morning at the house project, Phil had been at the boat since 06:30 and his back was aching and I felt very bad, but he was on the final 2000 grit polish of the hull, prior to compound and polish and it already looked amazing.   So I helped him with the compounding and polishing and promised to remove the remaining cove line and here is the result.