Too cool! Sky, I am so glad that you see where I am coming from with this. Thank you for understanding, it means alot to me from a fellow "purist"!
Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag now as they say. Sweet Melissa is going into the booth and under the spray gun for a complete paint job!
I have been in the yard for a few weeks for a bottom job, install two transducers for the new Furuno and Garmin units, replace old black exhaust hose with blue silicone hose, replace rudder bearings and repack rudders and shaft logs with GFO packing.
All this work was completed last week, but the 1967 Hatteras 50CMY that has been in the booth all month has been seducing me in ways I did not know were possible. The yard has an excellent reputation for paint jobs and they do it RIGHT! ALL hardware (including stanchion bases, etc) will be removed and re-bedded with appropriate bedding compound and secured with new SS fasteners. I am responsible for taking all the hardware to be re-chromed. There is a local chrome guy in my town that does work for Trinity Yachts and showed me pics of the work he did on "Zoom Zoom Zoom" a 180' Trinity with the new 2400hp engines that does 24kts! If their chrome is good enough for Trinity Yachts, it's good enough for me and this way I don't even have to ship all that heavy stuff!
Here's the fun part of the story: The yard has 10 boats on the waiting list to be painted and they said that my boat would take 2 months to do and to come back in the fall. I am trying to make a Bahamas run for June and July and it would be a shame to take all those pics in crystal blue water with a dull paint job! I asked the yard if I knew someone on the list that was willing, would the yard be willing to allow us to swap places if I could convince the person on the list. The yard laughed and asked who I knew. I told him that I knew the NEXT guy on the list (I really didn't know who was next, but a friend did put himself on the list about 4 months ago and was willing to swap spots with me). I told him my friend's name and his eyes got wide and told me that he was about to call my friend because he IS next on the list to go in the booth!
SCORE!!! Unbelievable!
So now I have been promised to get my boat back by the end of July. It pushes me back one full month so I still make the Bahamas it will be quite short so I may end up just going to Florida and save the extended Bahamas trip for next summer when the wife (teacher) can spend two months on board like we planned for this summer.
Either way, Sweet Melissa will be standing proud once again like she deserves. She has been very well taken care of mechanically, but has been somewhat neglected in the exterior cosmetics for the last 5yrs or so as the original owner aged and became ill, eventually passing away. He left behind a boat that was extremely well sorted mechanically but needed some cosmetic freshening throughout (furniture/drapes/countertops/appliances/exterior paint). I have managed to get most of the other stuff done and now it's time to get the paint job. I feel priveleged to own her and to have the opportunity to bring her back to her former glory.
I'll keep you guys posted!
