Approaching a corner

Wow, we are having a really busy January.  I was just uploading another set of photos which became named Impetuous January 2013 part 4... so I looked and we've taken 500 pictures!!!  Don't worry, we're not going to post them all!

                                                                        

This is because Impetuous is finally really taking shape and each time a new bit gets stuck on,  brightened up or working, then it deserves another picture.  Though we like her simplicity and like to keep her reasonably minimal; it's pretty exciting when anything can go on that we can look forward to using in the not so distant future.   Examples are that the main track got bolted down this week and today we bolted on our bronze fairleads.

 

Since we wrote last, we have done an awful lot of little painting jobs.  We have painted the traveller.  We've painted the rudder white and then added red stripes.

We've filled, sanded, filled again, sanded again, primed and painted our winch pads.  We've re-painted the top red stripe; there had been a little accident where the masking plastic had blown up into it last time.  We've repainted our cockpit well, locker, drains and lid (feature to follow about how we made this cockpit locker from scratch).  We painted our non-skid patch; if you want to read about how we chose to do our non skid, we have entered a more detailed description on the restoration page.  

 I'm afraid to tell you that whenever we say, 'lets 'just' paint the...' time gets eaten up and we wonder what on earth is going on. This may well be because we have chosen to use fancy and expensive paint (under good advice) and using it is commensurately tricky, to achieve the professional looking finish. We're using Awlgrip paint. This expensive material is certainly teaching us a lot, though I'm not so sure if it is chemistry or alchemy.

We need to consider all elements whenever we prepare and mix up a batch including (but not exclusively) sanding grit; temperature; humidity; particular (non melting) roller; how well the surrounding area is masked - having painted the top red stripe and covered the whole deck with tarps and masking paper we still discovered the occasional fleck of red in the most improbable places; and dust - on the surface, in the wind, near the surface, being blown up by the criminals doing comunity service in the police car park opposite (leaf blowing) - it's everywhere!

 

So far we have been pleased with the effect the paint gives; the boat looks shiny and new, however the flaws when you inspect carefully are tricky to prevent. MANY times I have said to Duncan, "we could have just come and slapped on some standard gloss paint over the cracks and gone sailing... it would have taken a few days!"  

 Most excitingly a couple of days ago we dry fitted and then epoxied down our cockpit teak.  It was a real eye opener sanding back the cover paint we'd added when we had some spare, before we got ready to do this job and remembered that before we started, the whole boat looked like this! 

 

 

After finally glueing the beautiful deck down we needed to then clean back the epoxy before we could put the caulking between the teak slats.  Before a false start yesterday when the forecast said no chance of rain and thunder clouds hovered the whole day we caulked most of the deck today though we ran out so it's a cycle over to the marine dealership tomorrow.  We are so lucky to have the use of Roger (Impetuous' landlord)'s trade account; most things are around 40% off.  A more detailed run down of how we chose to do the cockpit deck will be added in the near future to the restoration page.   

So we're having fun, and really gearing up to the final straight; the boat is FINALLY looking quite different and like she might just go.