Hello Cruisers,
I started planning for the first slipping of our Swanson 42 today. It is not due for antifouling till October, but that's the busy month on the club slips so I thought I might bring it forward a bit to September.
Prior to this
boat the largest I have slipped was a 27 foot Vandestat, so I am a bit in the dark about how long I should put aside for this job. The Vandestat was an easy four days usually.
I am expecting the
boat to be in good condition when I pull her out, and just needing a basic clean back of the old antifouling and reapplication of the new coat, plus a check and replace of the anodes where appropriate. (OK, I might be in for some nasty suprises, but the
survey was very positive.)
One optional, but desireable, job when she is out would be to strip or replace many, if not all, of the five skin fittings. The were identified in the
survey as apparently good, but old enough to warrant careful
inspection, being
bronze and probably original from the 1978 build date. All are reasonably easy to access from inside the boat and none seem so corroded that they will not dismantle easily.
Finally, I am pretty handy, and none of this will be first time
work for me, but where I am particularly defficient is in the area of working on a boat this large. Also, I am not sure if there are other jobs I should be thinking of doing while she is out of the
water. With the Vandestat it was all the issues around timber, this is the first fibreglass
keel boat I have worked on.
I will mostly be doing the
work alone, though from time to time my wife will be able to help, she's particularly good with the
paint brush.
So, how long do people think I should book the boat on the slips for (at $60 a day it is not horribly expensive, but enough to make me want to be reasonably accurate.) and what other jobs should I consider while she is out of the
water? Finally, does anyone have a suggestion on how to calculate the volume of antifouling required for the boat, it is clearly going to take a lot more than the Vandestat took, but I am not sure how to go about calculating the area to cover.
Thank you,
Matt