The Refit

Last night with the Mitú bunch at Barassan

We left Mitú and all we had come to love about it in a typical fashion. Typical to us, that is. Gabe was on the ball about getting all the luggage together, checking out of Los Paisas Hotel, checking in at the airport, thinking strategically about the next few days of travel. I was a slobbering mess. Mumbling tearful goodbyes in broken language to our Colombian and Brazilian friends, spilling a salty river of heartbreak on a dusty airport floor over Princess, Marcela's dog, who had become a dear companion during our stay, sobbing uncontrollably at the thought of leaving the underestimated charm of it all behind and never coming back. It is a distinct possibility that we may not return to Mitú, at least not any time soon, and I was struggling with the realization of it as we filed, single line past security, through metal detectors and out into the sweltering heat of the regional airport runway. The big hearts of our little Mitú community behind terminal windows, waving sadly in our direction, the same hopeful expectations of our next encounter painted on their faces as on ours. Salud amigos!

Nearly two months have gone bye now, during which time we have been hard at work bringing our recently purchased boat out of the oblivion of neglect that she has endured in the last 15 years. After purchasing the boat in July we commissioned Bennett Brothers Yachts to start stripping the epoxy coating and any layers of fibreglass necessary to release moisture trapped in the hull under the water line.

Here she is as we left her in North Carolina. Still bearing the old name Muirgheasa (yeah, exactly), an old Gaelic form of the name Morrissey, which happens to be the previous owner's last name. It is said to signify a brave, skilled seafarer. We like the name al right, but it's not significant to us and we found that no one ever knew how to pronounce it, just by looking at the name, so off it goes. New name TBA

The boat sat for a few months out in the open air with her bottom exposed to the warm breeze of North Carolina autumn, and by the time we arrived it dried out enough for the experts here to start building up the missing layer back up. They slapped on a few good layers of filling compound,  which was faired out to create a smooth, aqua-dynamic surface. This in turn was covered with a three coats of epoxy primer and then painted with two coats of antifouling bottom paint. Sounds simple enough, but it was a weeks long process sanding, slapping on compound, fairing, sanding, slapping on more goop, fairing and sanding again, rolling on epoxy, sanding and finally painting. We are eternally grateful to the BBY boat yard crew for their hard work and their professionalism.

Pip and Tucker putting a coat of epoxy on

While all this was going on Gabe and I started to work on the topsides and deck.
Our challenges were as follows:
1. An obtrusive teak rub rail, which was not original to the boat, now rotting and bringing water into the hull through bad seals and giant rusted wood screws that were used to mount it to the hull.
2. Crazed, leaky port lights.
3. Various leaks through deck fittings and poorly bedded fasteners.
4. A new swim platform.
5. Heavily oxidized hull paint.


1. The Raunchy Rub Rail
Gabe wanted that thing off as soon as he saw it, the first time we came to Wrightsville Beach to view the boat. It stood out like a sore thumb, painted Rust-Oleum green, cutting the elegant lines of the hull in half. I was afraid that pulling it off might damage the surrounding paint, as we noted that the original gelcoat had been painted, up to and around the intrusive rub rail. This meant that while we try to pry the rail off, with all the sealant and epoxy that had been forced into the gaps between the wood and the fibreglass hull, we might chip parts of the "new" paint, that has been laid over the sealed joints between the two materials.

We decided to strip whatever paint was on the rail and see what's hiding underneath. After taping the hull top and bottom, to protect its surface from the paint stripper we applied a generous coat of Citristrip paint stripper on the wood rail. We decided to use Citristrip because it is a gentler formula that is biodegradable and stays wet up to 24 hours, which we used to our advantage by taping plastic sheets to the treated wood and letting the product work overnight. It took up to three applications in some areas and a good deal of scraping and sanding to get what looked like 4 layers of paint off the rail.

Some sections of the rub rail were in good shape, solid. Some not so much. Stripping and scraping more and more of the rail revealed rotted areas that have been epoxied before, by the previous owners, to arrest the rotting and help the wood retain its structural integrity. We researched some products and techniques that would allow us to draw the moisture out of the rot, kill the living spores, seal and build up the damaged wood fibres so that we could salvage the dreadful thing. Yet, as we progressed, we started to discover areas of wet rot and compromised seal that allowed water into and through the hull by the way of rusted wood screws.

After a week of battling gummy paint and dried up caulking we decided to pull the damn thing off altogether.

We drilled out the bungs covering the screw heads that held it tight to the hull then scraped out as much of the sealant from the edges as possible. Next we sprayed the gap between the rub rail  and the hull with a silicone and adhesive remover to try and break the seal between them. After that we began to drive out the 3" wood screws out and watched our formidable opponent, the rub rail, spring away from the hull like it was being repelled by a great force. In our minds, the rail was never meant to be there and the boat expelled it from its body with a sigh of relief that we echoed as we hoisted the dead wood down to the ground.

After cleaning up the area where the rub rail used to be with more adhesive remover we filled the screw holes with epoxy. The strip of exposed gelcoat left behind was indeed different tone than the rest of the hull and we had to find a solution to marry the two shades of white together.

We chose not to try to match the paint colour, but rather paint an accent stripe along the rub rail gap. After fairing the damaged parts with a fairing compound we sanded a 3" strip to prep it for painting with a Platinum Grey a Petit Easypoxy topside paint that ties in nicely with the stainless steel and aluminum elements on the boat. The final result turned out even better than we expected. The stripe adds a nice visual detail to the broad hull surface area without chopping it up in two halves, the way the clunky rub rail did.
While prepping for and painting the new rub rail strip we slopped on a new boot stripe as well. The deep forest green which went so wonderfully with the existing name lettering and the rub rail wasn't our taste so out with the old and in with the new we went, a black and white striping that will go a lot nicer with the colour scheme we have picked out for the boat. More on that later.

Next we tackle port lights...