Still alive and well in Port Whitby

Hello remember use. I know , I know you thought we had sailed off the end of the earth but in actual fact we are safe and sound, still, at Port Whitby Marina. Its been over a year since our last blog and a lot of work has been done to Zingara. I will give you a pictorial chronology of the work because it would take me a week to type it all out for you. We will start back in the fall of 2010 when Zingara was hauled for the winter and move forward to present.


Winter cover
I made myself a promise that I wouldn't get caught with my cover down like we did the first winter in Midland.  I got a few quotes on winter covers and was shocked at the prices, 1 boat unit for a cover I would cut up and through out in the spring. ( 1 boat unit = $1000.00 )  After a little research I used PVC conduit and 6 mill poly.  This is the same poly that they use for vapour barrier in home constrution.  It acts the same as the white plastic that you see covering all the boats in the yards.  It cost me about $250, this included the PVC conduit which I will use again and again.  This year it will only coast me $80 for the plastic.


Installing PVC tubeing for cover





Clear 6mm plactic used for cover



Bottom Job

One of the BIGGEST jobs that you can do on a boat is the bottom and I am not taking about just painting it.  What I had to do to Zingara was scrap all the old paint off and then re-paint her.  I found that there were three coats of old paint that had to come off, 1 coat of VC Tar, 1 coat of VC-17 and one coat of blue Micron CSC.  I did this by hand and it took me about 2 weeks to complete.  I then had to sand the gelcoat with a 50 grit sandpaper The keel was another issue.  Someone had covered the keel in fiberglass which was starting to peel away from the cast iron keel.  This turned out to be more work then I first though.  Once I had ground the fiberglass off I found 1/4" of fairing componed that also had to be ground off as well.  I then had to re-do the fairing to my satisfaction which required 2 gallons of fairing compound.  The re-paint was 7 coats of Interpertect 2000 and 3 coats of Micron CSC.

Bottom sraped to gel-coat



Fiberglass removed from Keel





Two patches to repair stress cracks

Once I had removed the old paint I found stress cracks on both Starboard and port sides below the water line .  I believe this was caused be the aft lifting point being to far aft.  Here is a picture of the two fiberglass patches that I installed.



Spring 2011 ready for launch



Putting Rudder back in



I removed the Rudder in the Fall of 2010 to inspect it.  Here we are installing it in the spring.





I addition to the bottom job I re-wired the Nav Station.  Here is a picture after I removed the breaker panel.  I will post a picture of the finished Nav Station in my next blog.

I also rebuilt the Mast in the spring of 2011, new LED lights and wiring added.

Hard at work

Special thanks to Jennot(pictured above) for all the help!