2022 Spring Commissioning - Painting and Launch

 

We take off the both roller furlings so the travel lift bar can go back far enough to balance the boat and fit it in the launch well. We leave a line attached to the staysail (inner stay), but it's pulled back to keep it tight and out of the way.

We're ready. What could Dave POSSibly be worried about? : )

Clean!

Dave had removed the bow thruster to clean the propeller and repaint it with special paint. We scraped off a few barnacles from the area and painted bottom paint in the tunnel.

View from the top of the marina! Getting Dock lines ready which are in the lazarettes there. Gotta be so careful walking around so high, especially without the lifelines up. Must hold onto rigging or something all the time.

Clean and Pretty!  There is enough of the zincs left to leave for the year. Waiting for the Delaware City Marina to remove the jackstands, when they are ready.

Stopping traffic on the road for a little bit

Below, at the launch well, waiting for the highest tide and tidal current to stop so we are not swept to the side when backing out.

2022 Spring Commissioning - Bottom Paint Prep

 

Justice had many years of paint layers. Each year we did scrape some of it off to make it smooth for a new layer to adhere, but most of it remained on. It was time for this extra weight to come off and start fresh. Dave decided to scrape it off himself with a carbide blade scraper, avoiding going past the barrier coat of epoxy applied in year 2000. The green you see is all that remains of the first layer put on the boat 20 years ago. The grey is the bare hull.

After scraping, there was some sanding to be done to make it smooth for the first fresh layer.

Really back-breaking work, gotta have the scraper at the right angle or danger of going too deep. Took several days to do this part 

In Spring 2021, we only had time to do the starboard side.

This Spring 2022 was time to do the port side.

Serious racers don't let an extra layer weight of paint slow the boat down. Now that we are getting 20 layers of paint off "at once", we expect to notice a performance improvement. Last year we joked that since the boat sailed in circles because the port side slowed us down 😁

Below you can see the paint chips on the tarp. These were very heavy. I sweeped them into piles and scooped them into double bags, wearing a dust mask of course, to not breath in the paint dust.

Below, you see the starboard was already done, and the port side scraped and about ready for new paint.