Repairing Blisters with Calico Skies Sailing

After an amazing season of cruising the Sea of Cortez, Bill and Grace hauled out Calico Skies to tackle some much needed boat work.  After hauling her out, the boatyard sandblasted the hull.  That process removed the many layers of old paint and brought it down to a small remaining amount of barrier coat and they were able to see all the blisters that needed to be repaired.  This is one of the first projects they began to work on.  Bill and his friend, Big D, first cut the fiberglass cloth to shape using Electric Cordless Scissors for an easy cut at the push of a button.  They cut all the circular pieces to the shape of the blisters and begin mixing the High Performance Epoxy.   Before laying out the fiberglass, Bill preps the surface by wiping it down with Dewaxer & Surface Prep.

Then, after a few other things get done on Calico Skies, Bill goes back to repeat this process for deeper and irregularly shaped blisters.  He then wets out the fiberglass with epoxy and places it over the blisters.  Once it’s all laid, Bill leaves it to set for a couple of days.  After the epoxy is cured, he returns to clean the surface and prepare for sanding and fairing with TotalFair!    The rest of the episode, you can see Bill and Grace travel to AZ to pick up their new rudder and bring it back to Mexico to dry fit it onto Calico. 

Don’t forget to let them know what you think of the mini-refit so far and subscribe to their channel to follow all of Calico Skies adventures.  Head over to their channel now to see Bill sand and fair the hull in preparation for new paint!  Thanks for watching!