Pot Life

Now we are four weeks with our Katinka at the yard. Four weeks in which we prepared the hulls for our new antifouling. In the meantime, the right hull outlet has arrived. The installation was then the next task before could be painted. At first, all outlets and valves were provisionally installed to check the space conditions and the installability, then we adjusted the outlet lengths. This was necessary because we also mounted a load support for each outlet. According to the manufacturer's specifications, this can be transversely loaded with 226kg without the outlet breaking. We don't want to try this out, but it gives us a safe feeling. After all six outlets had been adapted, we started with the installation. The board outlets were adhesively bonded with epoxy, whatever else was needed. To this one must say that with such a plastic bucket as we have it almost everything is done with epoxy. Epoxy on a fiberglass boat is the welding machine on a steel boat. However, you always have to wait 24 hours until the connection is really hardened, but we have time.

The next day we had to paint. First we had to apply the primer. The discussions in advance with the paint supplier had made me a little insecure concerning the quantity. According to my calculations we should get there with 7l, but the supplier said 10l would be scarce and so I ordered 10l primer in four 2.5l cans. At least he came by personally and looked at exactly what we do here and gave his recommendation. That was once a good service. However, such a 2.5l bucket also costs 130€ and as a supplier you can stretch a bit. Since the primer is a two-component primer and the mixing ratio is 3:2, there was 1.5l in one container and 1l in the other. Everything is quite simple, two hulls, two layers, and four paint buckets, purely mathematically it works, there is no remainder. The fact that it came differently was logical. So the starting position was a 2.5l bucket for a layer on a hull. However, there is a so-called pot life. The pot life is the time in which the product can be processed. In our case 45 minutes. Let's make it, we'll make it. So I dumped the one liter into the 1,5l and started to mix it well. With the roller we applied the paint from the bow to the hull. It quickly became clear that the contents of the pot would be enough for both hulls if it weren't for the pot life, so we put our foot down. At 22°C a sweaty thing. We rolled like the world champions, but you can't win against the pot life. The pot life caught up with us shortly before stern and made half the bucket of paint, after all 65€, unusable. Gaby's reproachful looks hit me hard. On the one hand I had rushed her, which she couldn't stand and on the other hand I should have known about the pot life. With all the calculations, only the pot life had actually been right. But now the calculating really started. We had only one scale and it shows only kilograms. The specific weight of hardener and lacquer was to all abundance also different, in short we mixed and rolled and mixed and rolled and who knows us knows what kind of discussions it gave, especially when mixing, but we brought the two layers on the two hulls without once again coming into conflict with the pot life. Now we were ready to apply the Coopercoat, our new antifouling. If that was too complicated with the primer for you, you will have a lot of trouble following the further description. I'll try to get it over anyway.

Coopercoat consists of three plus one component. The first component is EPOXI!, the second is hardener and the third is copper with a purity of 99.9%. The fourth component, Isopropanol, is not absolutely necessary, but should make processing easier. The stuff to get here in Italy can be forgotten. Ama helped here, doesn't tell Greta. So far so good. Mix 0,5l EPOXI! with 0,5l hardener and add a little (two caps) Isoporpanol. Then mix well and then add two kilos of copper. Stir well again and... observe the pot life (45 minutes). Altogether we have 14l at our disposal. We planned to paint 4 layers wet in wet. So there are 7l per hull and 1,75l per layer. As already with the primer the calculation did not work here also. However, we had the pot life under control with the Coopercoat. The problem was that in the first layer almost no Coopercoat remained on the hull and so we crossed out almost both hulls with the first litre. So we had to change our strategy. If we wanted to finish one hull first and then start the other one, we now painted through both hulls one after the other and then applied the second layer to the first hull. Also with the second and third layer not much remained, which brought us so slowly in time emergency. From the fourth layer on the fuel consumption increased significantly and for the first time the ground could not be seen clearly. We brought up again two layers and had then still a rest we, meanwhile it had become already dark and we worked with the headlamp, distributed in the bow area as seventh layer.

 

 

 

Finally we started at 8:00 o'clock 11 hours without a break mixed, rolled and mixed again and all that on a Sunday. In any case we were glad that we made it here and see a light in the tunnel. Unfortunately, due to the Sunday work, our excursion this week was cancelled.

How we are progressing with our project and what else we are going to do will be explained next week. Until then, as always, fair winds and keep your ears stiff.