Backing up...

...is the only way to go forward. Those who have been around any kind of maintenance for a while are probably nodding and smiling, humming some version of the song, "Been there, done that, have the T-shirt." After several weekends spent chasing leaks in various hatches, rebedding the two big ones and polishing the tops of the two little ones, they still nagged. Polishing made them look better but also highlighted the fact that the protective coating on the aluminum frames has long since disappeared. Big areas of the big hatches are noticeably corroded and the plexi badly crazed, the plexi in one of the small ones is cracked. Time to regroup and rethink this project.

A shop near our home will clean and powder coat all eight frame pieces for a couple of hundred bucks. The only debate is what color they will be when finished. My choice would be fire-engine red (matching the interiors of the dorads). For the most part sailboats are about as visually stimulating as a chunk of drift wood; faded or off-white hulls with a muted "trim" stripe, white sails, dull grey metal work, brown wood, a near invisible dull aluminum mast sticking up in the air. One could draw a picture of a marina full of sailboats and use only half of the crayons in the basic box of 8. But I suspect the graphic design expert (and reigning Admiral) of our little navy will have a different (and admittedly better) artistic vision. We are pricing new plexi as well.


So at the top of the to-do list for this weekend is pulling the cabin hatches, disassembly, and dropping them off at the painters. Since they will be gone for a couple of weeks the gaping holes will be plugged with plywood and RTV. Kintala will look like a project boat after all...but she will still be able to take to the lake should the fall winds fill in. In a year or so (?) I will be sitting at the helm out in the middle of big salt water and know the hatches are both as stout and as protected from the environment as they can be, and will chalk that one up as a job done right. (Though they probably won't be fire-engine red.)