Cleaning and Repairing an Old Boat for Launch

Today we finally begin work on our new Marine Trader trawler. When we pulled it out from our sea trial we put it in a working area of the yard and we finally were able to begin working on our new adventure! Our top tasks until launch are: removing the old name, repairing the swim platform, painting the hull and accent lines, and and an overall deep clean!

Removing the old name, Hoot, which was 5200’d and screwed to the transom lead to quite a bit of the gel coat coming off. After sanding and cleaning the surface we took Bob’s advice and decided to fill in the holes with West System Epoxy! I was very excited to do this because it was unlike anything I’ve ever done… And I love learning! You can see that I failed quite a bit actually fixing it, but I did gain a new appreciation for how Epoxy works. Spoiler, the missing piece was the Colloidal Silica… once I mixed that in it worked like a charm!

We didn’t get much into our other tasks, but at least the transom is one smooth surface. Next up will be painting!

One common factor here is how much we are learning each day. Boat life is brand new, and a big part of boat life is boat work. This is the only way to make it affordable, as you may have heard, B.O.A.T. (bring on another thousand); boat life is not cheap. However, this is one of the parts of boat life that I am most interested in. As an engineer, I love solving problems and above all else learning new skills. Along with learning about Epoxy (which I’m sure we will use much more on the boat), I also learned much more about sanding and varnish. It was a fun few days!