Contessa 26 ‘Tess’

The issue is put to bed so now I have some time for boat work. And that’s what I’ve been doing. Since Saturday, I’ve been slaving and sanding my fingers to the bone. Except the corners, where I need to hand sand, everything we’re planning on painting is done, as well as the port side ‘closet’. I have the starboard ‘head/closet’ and V-berth left. Then of course the clean up.

We still have some stuff to fix before we paint but we’re closing in. In the immortal words of Borat “Niiiiiice.”

I’ve also put up some more sanding shots on Flickr.

Rob’s out of town and I’m on deadline so won’t be doing any work on Tess till the end of next week. My plan is to start kicking ass on the interior – filling, fairing, sanding, painting. It’s highly unlikely I’ll actually make it to the painting but hope springs eternal. . .

In the meantime, I’m soliciting suggestions for the rudder cheeks.

I’d really like to varnish them but am concerned about a couple things. First, they’ve been sorely neglected causing some crackage (that’s a word, isn’t it?) at the head.

I was planning on removing them, of course, then filling the cracks with West Systems (perhaps thinned?) and clamping the hell out of the individual pieces. Figured I’d let them sit for a few days for good measure and then . . . what? Should I epoxy them together? It seems like there might be swelling/contractions issues with that. If I don’t epoxy them together, should I varnish each piece separately? The ‘joins’ would be the obvious weak link if I varnished it all together.

I know someone’s reading this that has an opinion, so please post it!

That’s my new pirate name and I love it so much, I think I’ll change my official ‘Coffee House Name’ of Jill (easy to say and spell, as opposed to LaDonna) to RED JENNY RACKAM!

Get your own pirate name here.

Synthia with UK/Halsey delivered our brand spanking new main on Friday! Unfortunately, the wind was spanking too so setting it all up wasn’t in the cards. We had to wait till Saturday for that little adventure, which was accomplished with little fuss. The most nerve-wracking bit was unflaking it on the cat litter riddled deck and flaking it back up on the crappy slivery dock – I couldn’t possibly allow my new expensive and pristine sail to get mussed!

We don’t have all the hardware we need – like an outhaul – but just had to see how it set. Ain’t it purty?! BTW, Synthia is aware that the sail number is wrong (it should be 98) and will be bringing replacement 8’s for it. Three reefs, loose footed, 1 full batton and three partials. All for under $1300. I tell you, if you think you might want new sails, buy them in the winter when the discounts are good!

Another accomplishment was setting up the outboard. The reverse transom angle of 48 degrees (a figure I found on The Contessa Corner forums) creates unique mounting problems so Rob had a couple of teak pads made to mount the adjustable outboard bracket. Oops! Even in the lowered position, the outboard doesn’t touch the water. Lowering the teak pads won’t work because then they’ll be too far forward and the bracket will bump into the upper part of the transom. The teak pads must be mounted high up to work. A short brainstorming session later, we decided to have a flat piece of aluminum cut and drilled, on which we could then mount the bracket. Easy and cheap, or so we thought. It was easy enough but damn! That stoopid 5″ x 15″x 1/2″ piece of aluminum cost $100! By the time we found out the cost, it was a little too late to back out but we sure do wish we’d have gone another route. But I suppose that’s crying over spilt milk. And it works, so hey… it’s only money. (gulp!)

Here’s said set up in action. You can see the teak pads mounted to the hull, the long aluminum piece attached to that (follow the red kill cord) and then the bracket mounted to that. The little 2.5 hp happily lowers into the water and, as you can see here

pushes Tess just fine. It was rejuvenating to get her out on the water – after a month and a half of ownership, it’s about time. It’s strange how just that small thing – motoring around for 10 minutes – got us excited again. We were feeling a little disheartened before but are now totally motivated. A little morale boost goes a loong way.

Asshole did some strange stuff, as all PO’s do, but we’re discovering what the kitty litter non-skid was hiding. Apparently everything on the coach roof aft of the mast was reglassed. It’s a little ugly but sturdy. No idea why but guessing delam. Inside, the liner ‘bar’ under the mast has a crack the entire length of it and there’s a mahogany cross piece that’s been installed atop the bulkhead trim pieces.

Close up of the starboard side and the three crossbeams:

Close up of port side:

The strange thing is the cross piece doesn’t actually touch the overhead – there’s about 1/2″ of space that has been filled with a couple chunks of wood and some thickened epoxy. He also added three stringers to the overhead.

The rigging is original and has little room left to tighten. It’s undoubtedly stretched but we’re worried that it’s more than that. There is a slight indentation at the mast step that seems to indicate compression, and the crack seems like a symptom as well. But did Asshole’s ‘fix’ fix the problem? We’re hoping experienced CO owners could give us their opinions.

When I look at the pix of what we’ve been up to, I feel like we’re kicking some serious ass on Tess. But when I’m there, I look at this big mess and feel very discouraged. There’s so much to do to get her ready for the TransPac and much of it needs to be done by April if Rob wants to do the Singlehanded Farallones Race, which he does. No way. NO WAY! At least that’s how it feels.

(WARNING! RANT TO FOLLOW!) Especially when the PO (I think I’ll just dub him ‘Asshole’ and be done with it), bed every frigging thing on the boat with silicone – which is nearly impossible to remove from any surface without using some bad ass chemicals. Please…PLEASE…if you need to rebed something on your boat, don’t use silicone. No matter what the bullshit PR on the tube says, don’t do it. You’ll never regret it. But if you ignore my words of wisdom, you WILL regret it…someday. And that someday will be when the silicone inevitably fails (as all bedding does) and you have to rebed it but now have to fight to clean the surfaces. It’s just not worth it.

Use 3M 4000. Seriously. It’s great! Easy and cheap clean-up with rubbing alcohol (I couldn’t believe it when I read that in the instructions but it works ever so much better than anything else and costs just about nothing – how many boat products can boast that?). You may be tempted to use 3M 5200 but unless you’re talking about something under the waterline – such as a thru-hull – don’t do it. Unless you want your gelcoat to come off with the adhesive next time around.

I’m ok now. Thanks for letting me rant.

On to our progress. Remember, our focus is to rebed everything. To that end, I’ve removed all the teak (toerails and handrails) and filled the holes with epoxy. It’ll be awhile before we reattach them so it seemed the wisest course of action. Just look at the sad state of this poor teak.

Black enamel just slapped on – no primer – so it’s all soaked into the wood. A lot of teak will be ground away during the sanding of this stuff. Rob actually suggested either painting it again or just getting rid of it. HA! He doesn’t know me very well. (BTW, did you notice what Asshole filled the bungholes with? Yup, SILICONE!)

Last week we removed the stem fitting to find the original color of Tess: Shitbrickle Yellow (aka: Harvest Gold, ala 1973). There was some cosmetic fairing to be done on the hull and then we rebed the plate with lots of goo (no pic, for some reason).

Rob began filling in all the unnecessary fill holes (almost all of them). We’ll be fitting a new water tank where the engine use to sit so the old fiberglass monster in the bow is a gonner, as is the holding tank (there’s no head and we’ll be using a portapotty.)

He taped the underside of the holes and laid up several layers of glass with epoxy. I came along later to sand them down and fair them polyester putty.

We’ve been working from the bow back, for the most part, so the next stop was this:

We talked about glassing up the hole where the portlight sits but, after taking it apart, realized that the plex is pretty thick and if it’s bed well, shouldn’t be a problem. So I spent a little while sanding the bugger down (inside and out) before rebedding the little portlight. That was about the time I started getting really crank about the silicone Asshole used. But don’t get me started again!

Yesterday we managed to get one more stanchion done before calling it quits. That’s the bow pulpit and three stanchions down, three more stanchions and a stern pulpit to go. Doh! And the sail tracks. I have a feeling those bad boys will be the last to get done – any helpful suggestions?

We had one whole day between the end of my deadline and the day we left for our Christmas trip to Oregon to visit the fam. I was sure I’d have to spend that day shopping for gifts but I got done a little early and was frighteningly ambivalent about the presents I found. That left the whole day for working on Tess.

Our priority is to fix all leaks which includes rebedding every little thing – the PO, in his infinite boating wisdom bed everything with bathtub caulk. The chainplates were, of course, the worst offenders so they were at the top of the very long list. I only got in on the action for the last one as Rob did all the others while I was working – check out my last post.

We’re surprised that a boat with such a good reputation has such a crazy chainplate placement. Why didn’t they just place them on the hull? And, if they had to cut those big freakin’ holes in the deck, why did they put coring there? Why not just a solid piece of glass that wouldn’t rot when the things inevitably leaked? These questions and more twirl through our minds and are left unanswered.

But I guess all boatbuilders do things that subsequent owners question. So we’ll just keep our traps shut and press on. (By the way, don’t you just love that crazy paintjob?!)

The process was relatively easy. Unbolt the chainplate from below (one at a time, thank you), clean up the area, scrape out the old silicone, apply a BIG glob of sealant on the upper portion of the chainplate, slide it back through the big freakin’ hole, bolt it on and smooth out the goo on the deck. Fairly simple operation, really, but we’re still not particularly pleased with how they’re designed. We may change them to outboard chainplates . . . but not today.

We’ve used 3M’s 4000 sealant almost exclusively since it was introduced a few years ago. It’s as good as 4200 but also has a UV protectant in it so it doesn’t yellow like 4200. It stays flexible, has good adhesion but isn’t bombproof like 5200 – so when something needs to be rebed a few years down the line, as it will most assuredly have to be, removal of the item doesn’t also mean removal of the gelcoat. Hopefully it’ll be flexible enough to move with the chainplates instead of cracking and allowing water to dribble in. The good news is that fixing them also eliminated about 90% of the influx of water.

You may have also noticed in the above shot that there’s a noticable lack of kitty litter. On everything we’re rebedding, we’ve used the heat gun to loosen everything up enough to scrape the litter away. Then we sand the area fairly thoroughly, as if prepping for painting (which we’ll do eventually). But for the majority of the deck we’ve found a product that looks like it’ll work with a minimum of elbow grease: West Marine Safety Strip Pro. Leave it on overnight and when you come back, you just scrape the offending mess off – it even sticks to the paper to make cleanup easier. Supposedly it’s ‘less environmentally hazardous’ but no stripper is gonna be totally ’safe’ in that respect. The best we can do is minimize the impact.

Since returning from the holidays we’ve been going whole hog on rebedding stuff and that will be the subject of my next post but I’ve got to end this somewhere. Plus, I forgot to bring the chip with the photos on it!

PS: As a footnote to the cockpit drains Rob installed, they work great! We were half-expecting a big freakin’ puddle when we returned but the cockpit was completely dry after days of rain. Not even a drop remained!