Boat Work with Beau and Brandy Sailing

Meet Beau and Brandy Sailing!  This dynamic couple left their day jobs seven years ago, purchased a 1971 Pearson 35, Saoirsa, and turned it into a comfortable electric sailboat home!  In today’s featured video, Beau and Brandy work towards upgrading their windows with a fiberglass project using 5:1 Epoxy and TotalFair Fairing Compound! 

When they first got Saoirsa, the windows were cracked and leaking, so it was one of the first things they took care of when purchasing her. Now, six years later, they decided to give Saoirsa an upgrade with some beautiful new windows that open and close.  The first task was removing the old windows and prepping the surface before they make cutouts for the new ones.  They put nida-core boards in the cutouts for extra structure before laying down the first layer of fiberglass. Watch part one of this project for yourself! 

This brings us to today’s video of the week where Beau and Brandy continue to prep the surface for the new windows.  They plan on doing two coats of fiberglass on both the interior and exterior.  After wiping the surface with Dewaxer & Surface Prep Solvent, they soak the fiberglass in 5:1 Traditional Epoxy then lay it over where the original portholes were.  Beau places the wetted fiberglass to the hull then uses a roller to make it smooth and roll out any bubbles.  They repeat this process on the other windows before getting some unwanted visitors that night.  They were swarmed with mayflies, but luckily they applied a layer of peel ply to the fiberglass to help smooth the surface and help with the sanding the next day.  The peel ply seemed to have prevented thousands of these flies from causing too many imperfections in the fiberglass.  

Once the exterior and interior sides were completed, they moved onto the next step: fairing.  Beau mixes up a batch of TotalFair Epoxy Fairing Compound.  Unlike other fairing compounds they have used in the past, Beau and Brandy really love that this one turns to a green color once both parts are fully mixed.   Beau gets everything faired and sanded smooth before moving on to the interior where he starts to prime with a 2-Part Epoxy Primer! 

Be sure to subscribe to their channel to see the rest of the project come together and follow their sailing journey as they live out their dream: a life of freedom! Thank you for watching and reading along!