Racing to Splash - Sailing Alaya

As the mitten continued to thaw (sort of), we turned all of our attention to getting Alaya ready for the water. The to-do list started out as manageable and then quickly, and predictably, expanded. The big ticket items included rebedding/filling thru hulls, polishing the topsides, applying bottom paint to the hull and fixing the rudder.

Thru Hulls

Thru hulls or through hulls are holes in the bottom of your boat. They usually serve a critical purpose, like providing water to your water-cooled engine or a spot for the depth sounder. While they are necessary, they are still a hole in your boat below the water line, a major potential failure point. When we bought Alaya, we knew she had way too many thru hulls, 10 in total, including 5 that no longer served a purpose.

This spring, we decided to address the problem. We removed all the old fittings and ground down the hull to create a beveled surface. We then applied progressively smaller circles of fiberglass to create a solid plug on the inside and outside of the hull. Once the epoxy cured, we had to fare the hull, apply a barrier coat, install the new fittings, and then a apply at least a coat of bottom paint.

In the end, we are down to only three thru hulls below the water line.

Raw water intake for the engine.
Raw water intake for water maker (to be installed at a later date).
Single transducer that measures depth, speed and water temperature.

To remove the old thru hull fittings, we had to buy the largest crescent wrench at Harbor Freight.

Lucas had to grind a 12:1 bevel on the inside and outside of the hull.

A finished bevel on the left hole, we had to come back and bevel the hole on the right after fiberglassing the left one.

How they looked after fiberglassing. We then had to sand and fare in each hole before painting.

Cleaning up a new thru hull fitting after the compound had cured. The grey paint is a barrier coat.

The finished thru hull fitting for our water maker. Also pictured two more filled holes.

Polishing the Top Sides

Alaya’s gel coat (the white finish on her hull above the water line) has gotten pretty chalky over the years from oxidation. We wanted to try to revive it this spring. I tackled this project while Lucas was at work. We learned that you could spend hundreds of hours polishing your gel coat and there are hundreds of different products and techniques. We didn’t have hundreds of hours to spend, so we had to decide when it was “good enough”. After about a week of work, we called it. She looked better but we still have a lot more polishing in our future at some point.

We rented scaffolding to make the polishing process faster and safer. It worked great!

Applying Bottom Paint

Alaya is a big girl. This was especially apparent when faced with sanding and then painting her bottom this spring. Luckily, we had some great help! Susan, Lucas’ mom, helped me sand the entire bottom to prep for the paint. A few days later, once the sun came back out, Uncle Tony and Aunt Cathy helped me get the first coat of paint on while Lucas was at work. I got the second coat on during another weather window right before launching. We’re hoping this paint, Trinidad Pro, lasts for a few seasons.

Susan and I sanded nearly the entire hull on a Saturday.

Uncle Tony and Aunt Cathy helped get the first coat of bottom paint on.

The Rudder

The rudder is located at the back of the boat and is a key component of our steering system. While we were inspecting the rudder and steering system this spring, we discovered the hose around the rudder stuffing box needed to be replaced. This hose is part of a system that keeps water out of the boat where the rudder post enters the hull. The only way to replace it is to drop the rudder post far enough down to slide a new hose over the top of it. This meant undoing the steering cables, digging into the rudder gudgeon (which attaches the bottom of the rudder to the boat), using a jack to lower the entire rudder, replacing the hose and then putting it all back together – Another huge undertaking.

I was pretty nervous to start this project because it had the potential to dig up way more issues than originally expected but it had to be done. Amazingly, Lucas and Mike figured out how to drop the rudder in a day and we were able to get the new hose on that weekend. Unfortunately, during this project, we found rotten deck core where the top of the rudder post is attached to the cockpit floor, a new project to add to our list but it could be done once we were in the water.

A hurdle with this project was the weather, we had to fiberglass the gudgeon back in place and it was too cold for the epoxy. We were up against our launch date and had a tiny weather window to get it done. We managed to get everything together but the faring job wasn’t very smooth, another task we will have to sort out the next time she’s out of the water.

The culprit, the black and red hose was cracked and in pretty bad shape.

We had to dismantle the steering quadrant in order to drop the rudder post.

Lucas and Mike had to grind down the fiberglass around the gudgeon to figure out how to remove it.

Gudgeon removed! It is way beefier than we expected.

Jacking the rudder and post back into place.

Fiberglass the gudgeon back into place. We replaced the bolts while we were there.

Launch Day!

After multiple nights working passed midnight, we finished our projects mere hours before she launched. It was another mad dash but it felt so good to get her in the water. Next step, move out of our house and onto Alaya!