Sometimes You Just Have a Bad Day

Now the schooner has been coming on in leaps and bounds and two friends decided to give me a
hand on a pleasant Sunday to get the last coat of epoxy on the hull, leaving me just the area where
we have had the scaffold to do before we look at turning the hull over.

Everything was set for a good day’s work the stern quarter on the port side had already been done
and I was very pleased with the result that you can see.

After a toolbox meeting, which highlighted such things as safety in the workshop, the base rules we
moved on to the most important topics tea coffee and should we have biscuits or cake. A decision
was made that we should have both.

Our mixing is straightforward we use two jugs for the measuring out of the resin and the hardener,
this is then emptied into our individual jugs for mixing and these jugs are then used to fill our trays
for rolling on the epoxy. We mix 100 ml of hardener and 200 of resin this is enough for two people
to apply with the third mixing the next batch making sure we have fresh epoxy at the point of
application so we get a nice smooth finish.

Everything was prepared tea was consumed spare brushes and rollers were left out, everyone had
two pairs of gloves on, we were ready to mix, a final blowdown to remove dust and we were ready
to go.

The mixes went well the boys were laying the epoxy on really nicely and things could not have
been better tea and cake was taken between mixes.

Once we had gotten around to the starboard side bow area things were really going well. That’s
when I noticed little imperfections, I was not sure what they were.

I decided to stop the epoxy until I could work out what was going on. We had little craters
appearing in the final coat of epoxy. I was not sure what was happening, I got both boys to show me
how they had been rolling the epoxy onto the hull, I thought it might have been the application, but
I could find nothing wrong there. Next, I looked at the rollers themselves, but again nothing amiss.
I was now looking at the epoxy could there be something wrong here, I went a rechecked other
work we had done with the same batch. Nothing wrong with the epoxy, so what was causing the
problem.

As you can see the hull has areas of cratering and ripples. I have found a few parts of the hull that
are perfect but not many. I was still at a loss as to what had happened.

They say that with sleep comes a new day and fresh ideas, this did not happen to me I could not
sleep and was pacing around the workshop at three in the morning.

I was in deep thought with a cup of tea and two dogs following me around, when the compressor
started I went to switch it off and noticed that the air trap had broken.

My culprit was the compressor blowing water and oil in a very thin mist over the hull. I had done it
myself blowing off the last remains of dust.

Well, there will be a few days sanding while we get back to a good base and apply a new last coat.