May 2016 - S/V Akupara

May 18, 2016

Are we there yet?

I have been wondering lately how much time we have spent on Akupara and I am a little disappointed in myself for losing track.

I know that the majority of the time that we are there I write a blog post but I also know that some of the posts cover a full weekend while others only account for a few hours.

So in true mathematical fashion, I checked the number of blog posts and there are 121. If I assume a value of 6 hours per post, which would be a good guess as to how long we are typically at Akupara, I end up with 726 hours and considering the admiral is with me 3/4 of the time I will multiply that by 1.75 to arrive at a total of 1270 hours.

Now, it I divide that by 40 for an average work week, I get 31 weeks. Is it possible that in total one man by himself would have spent 31 weeks on this restoration? I doubt it.

I think a more accurate number would be a lot less than that as this math does not factor in all of the lost time for setup and tear down, Getting your head back in the game and all the rest. I honestly think a grand total of 121 days would be pushing it. So approximately 24 weeks.

At $75 dollars an hour which is the typical shop rate, I think we have already saved about $72000 in labour costs by doing it ourselves as opposed to hiring out the work.

That makes me happy!! Now I have an extra $75k to play with?? Ya right….

May 15, 2016May 15, 2016

Good for the sole…

Sometimes you need to divide and conquer. Case in point. I went to Akupara, the Admiral did not. However, with the addition of the new sander, she was not completely off the hook as she may have thought. I spent a few hours sanding and staining the main salon sole and the admiral spent a couple of hours sanding itty bitty pieces at the house. All in all a good day.

It has been a long time, but I actually brought another piece home. The ladder needs some TLC so it will be worked on through the week and hopefully be ready for next weekend.

There is 1 more really big job to complete in the interior. Sanding all of the fiberglass liner enough to take new paint. That one is not going to be fun.

May 15, 2016

It is a sailboat afterall….

We purchased Akupara 16 months ago.
We emptied everything we could out of her belly.
We piled it high in our basement.
The sails were near the bottom.
Yesterday I finally got around to investigating them, now that they are almost accessible, and we pulled them out to take a good look.
There is a brand new set of storm sails from Lee Sails, a jib and a trysail which is nice.

There is an old main that is pretty tired and probably the original main from the boat,

an old headsail that is ok,

but still fairly tired, a mizzen sail which appears to be a mainsail off of some other boat, we will use it until we replace them.

This obviously is not original to the boat, but we will see how it works.

There was also a mystery sail that came from a bag labelled Pearson 39, lapper.

It was an early racing sail by the looks of it, not dacron and yet not full kevlar. It was beaten to hell, dirty, smelly and found a new home in the garbage. It was not worth trying to save it. I could imagine hoisting it only to have it rip apart in the first puff of wind. Easier to pitch it now.
We also bought another Dewalt Random Orbital Sander. The first one is still going strong but we have some serious deck work to get at soon, and 2 will make it a lot quicker than one. As well, the Admiral always tells tall tales about how she is going to bring the sander home and sand during the week so that the pieces are ready for the weekend. Cough, never happened so I beat her at her own game. Now there is a brand new one here ;-).

May 15, 2016May 15, 2016

The Gallery Is Back!!

All it took was 2.5 hours, 3 different plugins, and uploading all of the pictures 3 times.

Damn just like a boat project!!!!

It can be found under Random Photo Gallery. The old link is still there, should be gone soon.

May 8, 2016

From light to dark.

The admiral had sanded the “entertainment unit” several months ago but because of the cooler temperatures and the absence of ongoing work, we had not gotten around to applying the cetol. Yesterday we pulled the piece back out and gave it a light sanding just to touch up a few of the places that had been nicked and to open up the pours again.

Overall I think it went well and looks a hell of a lot better now.

I still need to add the teak backing in behind, but it is nice to have this much completed.

While the admiral was sanding this, I was rebuilding the shelves inside with all new plywood of course. Interesting that I cut the new pieces using the old ones as a template and they still did not fit properly. I seem to recall that when I first removed them, they had not fit all that well either.

It will be nice to some day be able to open up the bar and have it nicely stocked, pour ourselves a drink, go to the freezer and grab some ice, proceed into the cockpit and sit quietly watching the sun go down feeling the boat move gently underneath. Ahhhh, some day.

May 6, 2016May 6, 2016

Are you sitting down?

Those were the words I wish I would have heard before I opened the email quote from La Fabrica.

$9600 for the main salon cushions plus tax. Plus the mattresses.

Wow.

So after I picked my jaw up off the floor and started to really analyze it, it is scary to say but it isn’t all that far fetched. When we met with them last weekend we approached it from the sky is the limit approach with no regard to cost. The best foam, the best upholstery. If you went out and priced 2 custom sofa’s and a chair for your home, what would it come in at? I’ll bet pretty close if not more.

So, we are waiting for the rest of the quote for the mattresses and then we will start to decide how we are going to proceed. We have several options from backing off on quality to reducing the thickness to choosing a cheaper material to buying a sewing machine and doing it myself (yes I have done this before).

In any event, if we went with the full cost option I think we would still come in under our total expected cost for Akupara. I will need to take a close look on the weekend.

Or there is still the option of launching without the cushions in order to meet our new possible deadline but then the answer to the question are you sitting down would be a big no.

May 1, 2016May 1, 2016

1000 small steps

Is it a bad thing when the local marine chandlery gives you a brand new hat? I mean is it something they give to all of their customers or is it something that they only give to the customers who spend a lot of money? I was given a Wolff’s Marine hat yesterday, going to have to put some thought into that one…speaking of which, I updated the costs page recently.

We had a gentleman from http://www.lafabricamarine.com/ down to Akupara yesterday and we took all of the measurements for the vberth mattresses, the main salon cushions and the aft cabin mattresses and also the cockpit cushions since we they were already there. I had brought my laptop and we went through a bunch of pictures I have been saving of interiors we like and also of ones we do not like. It was an interesting process to go through with him. A lot of our decisions were based on the fact that their shop labour rate is $75 per hour. Materials are market price but as soon as you start getting really fancy, the labour costs rise beyond reason of course. So we will wait for the quote which should arrive mid week and make our decisions from there. They have a 3-6 week lead time which will allow us to finish the brightwork inside the main salon so that they can come in and do all of their patterning.

The admiral and one of the crew did a lot of painting inside cupboards and masking of doors as well as giving the foreward head a good cleaning in preparation of starting to put it all back together. I have a bit of glass work to do in order to fill 2 plumbing holes in the platform where the head sits, but I wanted to leave them in case I was able to reuse them. It does not look like it at this point. So they will be filled, faired, and painted.

I also ran into Rob from http://prodigymarine.ca/ and requested that he visit Akupara to provide me with 2 quotes. One to paint the decks and two for a mysterious crack on the bottom of the keel. In reading the previous owners blog, I knew that a repair would need to be made, I am not sure if they ran aground or what happened but the repair that they had paid for needs to be repaired again. I have seen some of Rob’s work and I am confident it will be completed properly this time.

Today I have to help a friend on his boat for a bit, and it is supposed to be a brilliant day, so I think I may just have the time to haul all of the sails out and take a really close look at them to see if they are useable or if they will make good sun shades this afternoon. I do know there is a brand new try sail and storm jib that appear to never have been used but beyond that I have never opened the bags. Should be interesting.