Deltaville Refit (Part 1) VA USA

The last 3 months have been very productive but also manic; getting this blog up to date has very much been a lower priority.  For July and August we returned home for a family wedding.  It was our first trip back to Great Britain in 2 years so, as well as the fun of my sister’s wedding, we were also able to catch up with family and friends.  As you can imagine, we were spoilt rotten with fine food and wines at every reunion and so our return to BV at the beginning of September was going to have to include some sort of fitness routine.

The deck was a little messy after Dorian but that was all

Small storm surge resulting from Hurricane Dorian but not significant.  Happily the eye passed about 200nm clear of us

We flew into Dulles Airport, just outside Washington DC, on 3 Sep and hired a car to get ourselves down to Deltaville.  Amazingly we met an old work colleague, Steve Bell, at the hire car depot; it’s a small world!  We got down to Chesapeake Boat Works and back on board BV just in time for Hurricane Dorian to sweep up the eastern seaboard.  We were a little concerned but BV was well placed where she was on the hard and the hurricane passed far enough offshore that we had minimal impact.  The water level was a bit higher than normal, the wind blew lots of leaves and pine needles off the nearby trees, there was some heavy rain and it only blew 25-30 knots – we got off very lightly.

September saw us carry out a fast-paced mini-refit.  Nicky varnished nearly every bit of wood below decks except for the woodwork in the aft cabin and the heads.

Storage unit in action

Anything that could be removed from the boat was move to a nearby storage unit which we hired for the month. The storage unit (10ft x 25ft) was a fabulous way of clearing space on board to work and to allow the newly varnished panels to dry undisturbed, so minimising dust on the drying varnish.

BV with the loose Coppercoat chipped off and sanded, ready for the new coating

Meanwhile, I chipped off the band of loose Coppercoat on the outside of the hull.  This was a slow task, essentially putting right a bad job by the antifoul removal company back in England 10 years ago.  Coppercoat doesn’t stick to old antifouling paint and so, for the last 10 years, we’ve been patching that band of the Coppercoat in small areas where it had cracked off.  With the Coppercoat now getting a bit thin in places it was time for more drastic action.  I spent days chipping off the loose epoxy, followed by days and days of sanding so that the whole hull (not just the bare patches) was ready for an application of new Coppercoat.  Coppercoat is hard stuff, much harder than the glassfibre hull so I needed to be careful not to overdo things.  I would have liked to have got a slightly better fared surface but that would have risked removing too much gelcoat and as Nicky said, “it’ll be underwater so no one will see it”.

We did stop work every now and then to keep an eye on progress down on the dock.  The old Presidential Yacht, USS Sequoia, had been languishing there for several years whilst some lawyers dealt with unpaid bills and transfer to new ownership.   She’s clearly a historic vessel and it is even reputed that President Kennedy had a fling with Marilyn Monroe on board but the new owner must want her refitted very badly to foot the bill for moving her.

The whole vessel was lifted onto a yellow frame which was then jacked up to install the wheels.  Meanwhile tons of sand were delivered to make a ramp and boards laid out.  When everything was ready the USS Sequoia was backed out of the shed, moved sideways and then reversed onto a barge.  She sat there for 2 days whilst the wind died down and then started her journey north to Maine where, apparently, she will get new wooden planking below the waterline and will be refitted ready for her new owner’s pleasure.  A historic vessel she may be but it would be cheaper to have a new one made from scratch.

Back on BV, Nicky continued to make it harder and harder to live on board by lifting all the cabin’s soleboards and moving large chunks of cabinetry onto the saloon berths for ease of varnishing.  Happily, we had previously arranged for all of the soft furnishings to be recovered so all the saloon cushions had been removed whilst we were in the UK and were in the upholsterer’s workshop.  That meant that we didn’t need to store them and made it much easier to re-varnish the saloon.  But with the floorboards up and wet varnish everywhere moving around the boat was a bit of a balancing act.

The new cooker in place

Nicky also included the galley in her varnishing spree [Ed: which made preparing food for dinner really awkward, even if we were fortunate enough to be able to use the yard’s barbecues for cooking].  As a part of the mini-refit we’d decided to replace our old cooker was showing signs of its age.  Sadly, the company that made it has gone out of business and we can no longer get spare parts for it, hence the decision to buy a new one.  The new cooker, a bright and shiny Force 10 [Ed: the only ‘Force 10’ we want to see on the boat!] had been delivered whilst we were away.  As soon as the alcove in which the cooker sits had been re-varnished we fitted our new stove so that we could boil the kettle for our morning cup of tea again.

Applying the barrier coat to the areas we had sanded back to gelcoat.  I got a new suit for the occasion as my sanding suit was decidedly grubby after 2 weeks of preparation work

Work on the outside of the hull continued with the application of a special barrier coat supplied by Coppercoat USA; we wanted to ensure that anything we put on the hull was fully compatible with Coppercoat.  We’d checked the weather forecast carefully and ‘barrier coat day’ (Wednesday 18 September) was the start of a 4 day window of 0% chance of rain.  Coppercoat needs to be applied within 24 hours of the barrier coat and both products are vulnerable to rain, or indeed a heavy dew, for 3 days until completely dry.

Building up the layers of Coppercoat.  Top left: coat number 1 on the barrier coated areas.  Top right: coat number 2 on the barrier coated areas.  Bottom: first coat on the whole hull

We had originally planned to coat one side of BV with Coppercoat on Thursday and the other on Friday.  However, we found the barrier coat to be so thick and gloopy that splitting it into 4 parts was going to be very difficult (we would have needed to do 2 separate barrier coat layers on one side on the Wednesday and then on Thursday do 2 separate layers on the other side).  So we painted on all the barrier coat on the Wednesday and committed to Coppercoating the whole of the hull on the Thursday.  It was a very long day!!  We started at 9am and didn’t finish until 6pm.  Coppercoat is applied very thinly by roller and so the first or two coat look quite transparent.  However, by stirring the epoxy frequently you keep the copper particles in suspension and as you build up the layers the coating turns a coppery chestnut brown.  It was hot (30 degrees Celcius) so we were able to work continuously.  Nicky painted the port side whilst I worked on the starboard side.  The warm temperatures meant that as we finished a coat on our side, our start point had dried to a tacky finish and was ready for the next coat.

Building a skirt around the hull to protect the new Coppercoat from rain or dew for 3 days until it was dry

The smart new Coppercoat.  It’s smooth and hard so we should sail faster and, in warm climes, we can easily dive on the hull and run a sponge over it to keep it clean.  The normal ablative antifouling paint (which is surprisingly expensive in the USA) just comes off if you do that

At 6pm we had used up the last of the kits that wanted to mix up.  Where we had taken the old coating off, over the day we had applied a total of 7 layers of new Coppercoat.  The waterline area had had a minimum of 4 coats and the rest of the hull 3 coats on top of the old Coppercoat to rejuvenate it.  It looked fantastic and our hard work now should mean that we don’t have to repeat the work or apply any more antifouling for 10-15 years.  Our last task of the day before drinking a well-earned beer or 2 was to building a plastic skirt around the hull to protect the new Coppercoat from rain or dew for 3 days until it was properly dry.

Relaxing with OCC members in the evenings (left to right): Lisa Pollington (Wild Iris), Helen Savage (Grace of Longstone), Steve Kerswill (Innamorata II), Dave ‘Birthday Boy’ Savage (Grace of Longstone), Mark Pollington (Wild Iris), Carol Kerswill (Innamorata II), Nicky and Reg Barker (Blue Velvet of Sark)

We weren’t alone in the boatyard.  All around us other boat owners were hard at work and each evening we gathered around the barbeque area for dinner.  That had the big advantage of keeping the cooking heat out of our boats [Ed: they were hot enough already at around 28 degrees Celsius even well after the sun had set] plus it was very social.  We clicked into a regular routine of pre-dinner drinks and showers whilst the food was cooking and the conversation covered sailing plans as well as the daily maintenance triumphs and shockers. We even had time to celebrate Dave’s birthday and Mark’s a few days later.

Deltaville, Virginia, USA

Richmond and Charlottesville VA USA

Our good friends Bill and Lydia Strickland offered us a welcome break from boatyard chores with a trip to Charlottesville to watch the (American) football team of University of Virginia (UVA, ‘The Wahoos or The Hoos’) play the Old Dominions and we jumped at the opportunity gladly.  We made a prompt start from Deltaville on the morning of Saturday 21 September for the hour or so’s drive up to Richmond where Bill and Lydia have an apartment.  Here we regrouped, organised a cooler of ice and drinks and stopped for a bite to eat at a local café.  Then it was back in the car for the next hour’s drive to Charlottesville, where Bill and Lydia planned to show us the UVA grounds, before heading on to the stadium for the match.

The Rotunda.  Now more meeting/lecture space, when the university first opened its doors the Rotunda was the library of Jefferson’s ‘academical village’

UVA was founded by Thomas Jefferson in the early nineteenth century.  Building began in 1817, the university was chartered in 1819 and student classes began in 1825.  Jefferson’s aim was to set up a university where students could specialise in a relatively wide range of fields (most universities of the day taught just medicine, law and religion) and where education was completely separated from religion.  To that end, one of the largest construction projects in North America up to that time, the new Grounds were centred upon a library (then housed in the Rotunda) rather than a church.

Views of the Grounds.  Left: the Rotunda at the northeast end of the Lawn.  Right:  Old Cabell Hall at the other end of the Lawn

At the time of the university’s founding, all the students and their tutors lived in rooms on either side of the Lawn, with the library (the Rotunda) in easy reach.  Nowadays UVA boasts about 22,000 students who are housed throughout the city.  However, the rooms around the Lawn are still much sought after despite having no air conditioning, no central heating (though they all have an open fireplace) and no convenient ablutions (it’s a 2-3min walk, often down a pavement adjacent to a public road, to a similarly aged university building now updated to incorporate bathrooms and toilets).  Though a year’s accommodation in one of these rooms might appear to be a punishment, they are actually allocated as a prize to those students who achieve the best academic standards in their year group.

One of the rooms is that where Edgar Allen Poe spent a term before leaving the university with financial difficulties (though it is frequently not highlighted that these difficulties where not aided by his gambling).  Poe’s room is dressed as it was in his time and is maintained by UVA’s Raven Society and there’s a short audio commentary about his time at the university, which is activated by pressing a button next to the (glass) door. Having spent a year in a room overlooking the High Street in Oxford, listening to the tour buses going past with their incessant commentary about the university and the colleges close by, Nicky said that she pitied the students accommodated in the rooms on either side of Poe’s.

The President’s House (if I remember correctly!)

All in orange – Hoos supporters enjoy their pre-match tailgate party

After an hour or so wandering the historic Grounds in the heat, followed by a restorative beer or 2 in a student pub, we hightailed it to the football stadium in good time to have a ‘proper’ tailgate party before the match.  The last time we had been to a UVA match the heavens had opened in the couple of hours before the match and we had had to hunker in the car eating our picnic, just as if we were in a tailback on the M25.  This time, however, we were able to enjoy a real feast, upright and in the open air, accompanied by that most non-standard of drinks at such an event – a good G&T!

Pre-match warm-up parade by the band

And then into the stadium; and what a contrast to the last time!  It was light, dry and sooooo warm [Ed: note to self, no need for warm jackets and trousers in September!].

Bottom left:  Fireworks to celebrate a home team touchdown.  Right: Bring on the support staff!

The band marched and played and failed to churn up the pitch.  The cavalier on his horse wasn’t a drowned rat and the cheerleaders all looked warm and genuinely happy to be there.

Come on you Hoos!

And the match?  Well, it wasn’t the Hoos’ finest hour.  In fact, at half time they were 17-0 down.  But they came back to win 28-17 so they proved they can pull it out of the bag when they need to.  Now let’s see if they can emulate last year’s men’s basketball team……..

Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia, USA