Caulking Done, Now Prime and Get Ready To Paint!

Two coats of Pre-Cote primer were painted above the water line after the seams had been puttied and lightly sanded between coats.

It gets more exciting as we get closer to actually seeing the changes. Some work that gets done does not really reflect all the time and effort put in to get things completed and ready to sail.

It took over two months to complete all of the caulking and seam puttying before she was ready to paint.


Howard was so happy when he was able to pound in the last piece of oakum and then finish puttying the seams. Next step is to paint primer bottom paint on the underwater section...brownish-black color. Then we will add another couple coats of bottom paint to finish it.

He became quite ingenious on ways to sit under the hull in semi-comfort to do the caulking...two cushions from the dinette, a rug thrown out by a neighbor, and a step stool worked in his favor.





Susan's tasks were rolling the cotton and oakum into "ropes" for Howard to hammer into the seams. Each "rope" was rolled on the leg to tighten the rope and pull out unusable sections of sack webbing that was stuck in the oakum sections. The cotton ropes were used above water in the smallest, tightest seams that the oakum was too large for. In some seams, Howard had to combine two to three ropes into a larger rope based upon the size of the seam he was working on.