We wrote previously about the gawdawful Poliglow that was used on our boat and how sad it made her look. Plus, after 15 years and a trip around the world there were plenty of bumps and bruises all over. Our general rule is to spend our maintenance and upgrade dollars first on repairs and such that keep us from sailing but we both felt the need to spruce up the old girl. A normal compound and wax just wouldn’t do the trick; we were starting from -10 and we wanted to get to +8 or thereabouts. That’s a long way to go. All of our scrubbing and stripping failed to remove the offending Poliglow and after several trips around the boat with our fiberglass guy and a lot of testing of various toxic brews the conclusion was: it’ll have to be sanded off. This concurred with our own Internet research, and reluctantly we agreed to the estimate.
The work happens in fits and starts, which is apparently how it is here in Trinidad. Between rainstorms and road closings and our guys getting pulled onto other jobs, we eventually had to make a little noise in the office to get things going. Luckily Brian and our main man Ryan take great pride in what they do, and we’re delighted with the results so far. This includes — besides the big job of sanding all the Poliglow off and compounding the hulls and deck — a fiberglass wrap of our hull-to-deck joint around the port trampoline, filling and gel coating of various chips and cracks, dinghy dings at the back steps, and a couple of amateur patch jobs that bothered us.
After the compounding but before the waxing Jason of Signlab applied new striping, logo, boat name and hailing port. EV is looking good!
Bee-yu-ti-ful! Can’t wait to see her in person!
She’s a beaut.
Looking good! Are you at Peake’s? We had a lot of hurricane Ivan damage repaired in Trinidad and were happy with the work as long as you keep reminding them to come back and finish the work 🙂
Hurry back to Grenada, we miss you guys. Really looking forward to seeing the new EV.
Looks fantastic. Does the compounding remove gelcoat?
Just a tiny bit of the outer layer that’s gotten oxidized and dull through the years. What’s underneath is shiny and new looking. Plus the places where dings and bumps had completely removed the gelcoat can be touched up and faired in to look like new. Our guys were very good at this and we’re delighted to get rid of most of the bothersome areas of surface damage.
A new facelift! Enjoy…and… hug each other for me!