A Month With The Iguanas

It has been a busy month here at the Power Boats yard in Trinidad. This is prime cruising season, so the boat yard has rapidly emptied. There are a few of us are still working away on boat jobs and it's lucky that we have both friends and the resident Iguanas keep us company.

Phil Welding On The Bow

We had two unexpected setbacks this month.   Firstly our welder Ian, from Chaguarmas Metals, was hurt in a car crash, then his boss also had a car accident, so our welding and stainless projects came to a stand still.

To our rescue came Phil Christieson, from the New Zealand yacht Windora. He offered to complete the welding on the new stainless steel bow roller extension - it took two long sessions, standing on high planks in the blazing Trinidad sun, before the new part was finally and beautifully welded in to place.

Secondly, our local painter Rawle spent 6 days in hospital and was diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer. We kept busy whilst Rawle was recovering as we had a lot of refinishing to do, including hatches on deck and an area of hull surface inside, around the refrigerator.

Rawle returned to work last week and followed his doctors orders, taking his meds, cut down his working hours and is now eating lunch every day.  With Neil assisting, the blue boot stripe has been sprayed and the waterline marked. Visual progress at last.

Here is our month summarized in images :

Spraying Epoxy Primer, Almost Ready For Top Coat

Spraying Primer At The Bow, Where We Removed The Stainless Steel Striker Plate

Rawle Spraying Awlgrip Top Coat

Neil & Rawle Measuring And Taping The Boot Stripe Lines

Rawle Spraying The Blue Boot Stripe

Shiny Topside, With Window Surrounds Being Refurbished

This one is my favourite image. Rawle has been helping Neil with his spray painting technique - best of all, we have found that we can use our PowerDive hooka as the compressed air source for our small spray gun.

Today we started building the paint layers on our wonderful Gori propeller. It is my favourite image because this means that we will be applying anti-fouling and launching in the next few weeks - there is water at the end of the tunnel.