It occurred during the endless sanding tonight that maybe all the fairing work is what truly makes it the builder’s boat. The hands on every square inch of this 39′ beast, multiple times with big sanders, the “torture board”, hand sanding tools and finally just holding the damn paper until it gets too hot in your fingers. All the fiberglass, carbon and fancy epoxy buildups – now we sand that labor and money away. Could be frustrating, but instead tonight just maybe it’s more like sculpting – keep chipping away and we’ll find that pretty boat in the stone. Lots of chipping away, to be clear!

The deck area is close. Where other builders get it done in three fairing passes, we’ll apply coat #4 tomorrow to fix various blemishes and still unfair spots.

Marking the blemishes with a pencil as soon as they’re spotted in sanding is a big help later.

See the shiny (low) spots in the last photo of the companionway slider cover; that’s probably one more pass of putty then final sand before primer. A couple more days of spot fixing like this will have us ready on the whole boat down to the water line. Next up will be somehow lifting the hull a few inches off its big trolley and fairing the whole underwater area. A busy weekend ahead…

Painting part of a boat might be trickier than painting the whole thing. The two floats / amas were finish-painted 5+ years ago, but we updated them this year with the new chainplates, net lashing tubes and beefier deck hardware. We had one unopened quart of the previous generation Interlux off-white two part polyurethane; it needed to do the whole job… Here we are after the glossy paint:

This is applied with a smooth foam roller and tipped-off with one stroke if a brush at 45 degrees. Definitely an art, easy to screw up, and must be done with very thin paint.

Now the masking goes back on to make out the non skid areas:

Yep, the tape roll was the just-right size to make an elegant arc near the hatch. We pulled all the tape this evening and are satisfied with the results.

The floats are now done and ready to move out of the shop. We tried to mask off for the few inches of bottom paint each hull needs but their dollies are too in the way. After an hour of rolling around the floor getting pretty frustrated in the 95 degree heat I realized this job will be much easier just before launch when the boat is assembled and the floats are suspended in air. So we need to account for 24 hours of dry time in the assembly schedule. There is also deck hardware to install but that can be done while the hulls are on their trailer in July. We’ll talk about the butyl tape method later.

So tomorrow afternoon we’ll take our best shot at loading these 35′ hulls

On to this trailer:

It’s a 35′ heavy duty aluminum boat trailer, now with 4x4s lashed over the bunks to accept our floats on their trollies. We have 8′ of width on the trailer while the trollies pushed tight side by side are 7′. The trick will be lifting them 32″ in the air to clear the trailer. Between our chain-hoist from a shop roof girder, and the neighbor’s forklift hopefully this goes alright. Ought to be exciting anyway!

PS – if any readers know of a F32/32/33 looking for a very nice big aluminum trailer, send them our way. We’re borrowing a friend’s; it was outfitted new for a Corsair 37 for delivery cross country, and was never road-used after that. It should be available for sale in later September.

As we finish up the exterior of the whole boat now, there’s a short list of ‘modernization modifications’ that should be done because better ideas have come along since this build began nearly 20 years ago.

The six foot bowsprit gets a bobstay from the end of the pole down to the bow of the main hull just above the waterline. We have a stainless steel u-bolt installed to carry this big load as the spinnaker pulls up and forward. But the u-legs are not in line with the force, and the backing plate is measly. Over time, and probably way out on an ocean, this will become trouble.

First we tried removing the fitting, but the epoxy was bonded around the threads so this thing was never coming out. We cut and ground it below the surface and entombed the legs and nuts in the new reinforcements. The new hole was cut about a half inch aft of the point where the hull sides meet to form the bow stem. The tube shape is a 1-1/4″ PVC pipe.

Inside it got a wedge of high density putty that makes a solid wall, then uni fabrics to spread the load, take over for the PVC, and tie the two hull sides together. The access was tough, reaching just far enough inside the watertight crash bulkhead.

Then from the outside we ran strips of uni through the tube and radiated the ends out around the hull about 4″ on both sides of the boat. Three extra layers of uni glass were laid along the pull direction, and that’s what made a bulge on the bow stem just above the new hole height.

Then some ‘finish cloth’ bidirectional 6 oz was added to tie it all together before fairing.
Here’s the work in progress after two fairing passes.

The new bow hole seems plenty strong to better distribute the sails’ force, and no chance of leaky and fatiguing metal. Feels like ten hours well spent.

And here are the photos I mentioned last week about saving some $ on more metal fittings. These are the attachment points for the nets up at the bow, by the anchor. Sort of mini versions of the story above.

The exterior punch list is almost done, and we’ll get back to the cabin build by late next week.