I told Keith on the phone today that the boat is finally almost done, and yet the list of things to do seems to be growing! Kind of stressful. “The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away…” (Thanks to Paul Simon for sticking that one in my head all evening)
Maybe we’ll spend time this weekend separating the punch list in to pre-transport vs post-launch tasks. We don’t really need the boat in the workshop to make the freezer lid or test out the self-steering windvane installation. Let’s get sailing and sort the niceties out during the summer.

Good news is that we won’t slip-slide on deck. Finished the whole topsides non-skid job tonight. Here’s how the past four evenings were consumed.

After wet-sanding at 320 grit the entire deck and cockpit first coat from last week, we set out to mask the waterways (smooth parts) to delineate all the non-skid. No rulers or tape measures – just consistent distances from edges provided by sliding a couple of paint sticks around.
Then to round off all corners, Mrs.Carter came aboard (finally found a non-itchy / non-nasty job in the shop!) to cut 1/4 rounds using a 1.5″ circle.

She would cut about 10 ‘moons’ on the cutting board then we lifted the edge and transferred them to the deck where needed. (Leaving no knife marks in the paint the way it’s often done). Must be a hundred or so of those little buggars done. There
were both inside and outside curves to do and this extra couple of hours made the job look much better.

With the masking done it was time for another solvent wipe before rolling on the same Interlux Perfection “Off White” but this time with Awlgrip’s nonskid plastic beads mixed in. This is definitely something to practice off the boat; tricky to get the bead mix ratio and roller saturation right for an even distribution of grit on deck. We had this learning curve on the beams months ago. Once the paint and beads are mixed in your bucket, only pour small amounts at a time in the roller tray so you can frequently stir the bucket and refill the tray – keep those particles even suspended in the paint.
The Second coat went on late today and it all looks good, and I like the texture. It’s pretty aggressive, but that is intentional because there’s so much slope to these decks that we’re scared of loose footing.

It should be fun for the Saturday morning unmasking, then we’ll finish painting all the gloss areas of the white portions of the entire hull. Might get to start the platinum grey below-the-nets topsides by Sunday afternoon.

(Did anybody notice the jib car tracks are running across the deck, not longitudinally? Thx to a wise old tri mariner)

While deck paint dries we’ve been working paint steps of all those loose parts. Here’s the boom after all it’s final sanding, getting a black “don’t look up in here” treatment to the open underside. (Recall months ago we’ll run the outhaul and reefing systems inside but with easy access, which Lenneman will totally approve :)