Finishing up the Rudder

Ok, so I have been absent from my boat for quite a while. A second move to Orange County  California and the purchase of a new (to me) Beneteau F235 has put this project on hold for too long.  My goal now is to get this boat on the water this summer!

A few months ago I decided to at least tackle one of the smaller projects which was finishing the rudder.

A few things had to happen:

First of all I had to apply the finish to it. Previously I had put a couple of coats of laminating epoxy. So I sanded it smooth and applied a couple of coats of rub on polyurethane. It is one of my favorite easy finishes and I didnt want to hassel with varnish with all the nooks and cranies.

I attached the gudgeons to the rudder and used a phillips screw driver to make sure they were somewhat lined up

Next step was to attach the Ronstan Battlestick that I bought as a tiller extension

I ended up having an old neoprene diving "bootie" that was past its prime so I cut it up into strips and use 3M 4200 adhesive to glue it into place to hold the rudder straight in the "Cassette"

Not the prettiest solution but it should work fine. With that I would call this particular part done!

I Have Moved!

Ok so I last year I moved from Arizona to Palm Springs California area to get a little closer to the ocean. I loaded up the PaperJet on it's construction frame and car-topped it to it's new home.

The boat took up the entire roof rack and added a lot of windage to the truck. Not sure how good a system this would be to take it back and forth to the water. I'm thinking a trailer will be the better option.


I now need to get my garage ship shape so that I can finish fairing / primer coat and paint it. I hope that 2015 is the year this boat gets wet!

The construction frame work great for transporting

Ready to leave to California

PaperJet at it's new home!

Living on the ceiling once again!

More and More Fairing!

Nothing much to say other than more sanding and more fairing! I read somewhere that you can almost spend as much time on the final finishing aon  boat project than building it. I'm beginning to agree!

I put on another coat of primer and added some more fairing material at the joint!

Will sand it down this weekend and put another coat of primer! Hopefully we are getting close!

More Fairing

The first coat of primer on the hull gave a pretty good indication on what areas needed some TLC. I wanted to make sure that the chines were somewhat consistent so I went ahead and added a bead of fairing material to areas that looked like they needed some help. It was also readily apparent that I did not get enough fairing material on a couple of the joint areas so I went ahead and added some material to those areas also.

It is worth noting that it was a good idea adding a coat of primer before proceeding with this fairing step - It really allowed for some "sacrificial" sanding material so that in the process of  sanding down the fairing compound I would not "break through" the laminating epoxy.

Next step is to add another coat of primer and see how it looks!

Fairing the Hull

Had some time off between Christmas and New Years and the weather has been extremely pleasant! So it was a good opportunity to get the PaperJet down from the ceiling and start the fairing process. You would think that a a hard chined boat like this would not require a whole lot, but it turns out that you have to do some blending in of the fiber glass seam tape and the hull. In hind sight I should have used a 4" tape vs. 2" as specified in the instructions that way I could have had some room to blend the tape vs adding fairing material.

The other area that needed some work was the bow, so I applied a liberal amount of filler in that area so that I could get a uniform shape on both sides of the boat.

I spent a lot of time sanding down the fairing material and getting smooth with the hull. This initial fairing highlighted a few spots that needed additional work. Mainly I need to add some more material to the joint in the hull, and secondly I need to add some fairing material to the chine areas so that I get a nice consistent chine across the hull.

I was debating whether I would do a second round of fairing prior to primering the boat, but decided that I would be better off adding a coat of primer and doing the final touches of the fairing over the primer. I really had a couple of thoughts behind this. Firstly, Stan Sussman affectionally known as Paint Boy from Interlux suggested that it would be better to have a coat of primer under the fairing material. Secondly in my effort to blend the fairing material into the hull I was beginning to get a little thin on the clear epoxy coat!

I feel like some progress is being made now that I am seeing a primered hull!

Next step is to add some more fairing material, do some more sanding, and another coat of primer!

Let's Get it Started!

Wow! It is hard to believe that it has been over 6 months since I last worked on the boat! You can really blame it on the re-fit of Tru Luff, my Catalina Capri 18, for a couple of summer ocean trips in California and the stinking hot Arizona summer!. Now that the temperatures are finally getting in the pleasant range I hope to finally finish this project! The first step was to finish sanding the hull in preparation for some fairing work and primering which I am glad to say I finished last weekend!

Hopefully next weekend I can start the fairing process!

Primer coating of Deck Complete!

Finally finished primer coating the deck. I ended up applying 3 coats total. I tried a couple of different rollers and found that the best finish came with the sponge type roller vs the more traditional low nap "hair" type roller. The only downside with the sponge type roller is that the chemicals in the epoxy primer breaks down the material therefore you have to keep an eye on it and replace it once it starts getting somewhat limp!

Putting the blue painter's tape on it 3 different times was a bit of a pain, but worth it.

Overall it looks pretty good. There are some areas that could benefit from a little filler to smooth things out but most of them will ultimately end up under the non-skid therefore I'm not sure its worth the effort at this time.

I decided to wait on painting the deck until I sand the hull and primer/paint it. I'm pretty certain that there will be some vigorous sanding going on with the hull and there is no point in ruining the final finish!

We flipped the boat after the last coat dried and now it's time to start on the hull. Looks like another long sanding project to me!