I'll Flip Ya!

Wow, I have such great friends. I had Terry, Chantel, Badass, Karyn, and Hutch show up last night to help me flip the boat over with Adrienne and I (it's so much easier with more hands!). I had finally finshed the bottom, and she looks great!

Today was a holiday here in Canada so I spent the time doing boat work (Adrienne and Karyn went to the beach...I guaranteed I had more fun!).

Today, did some minor epoxy work where the old chain plates were and where the new rudder post is. I sanded them smooth and got a few coats of paint on them. I also painted around where the new spin launcher bar is. I added the Black Sheep insignia, as well as the forward spin halyard block.

As for what's left to do before finally sailing her this weekend, I've got the following to do:

1) Finish painting

2) Re-install rudder gugions.

3) Install hydro turf

4) Install spin launcher sock

5) Install hiking straps

6) Make new lines for Gnav and cunningham.

7) Add Jib halyard fine tune

It's getting close!

Nick Rack/Nice Bottom

It's been a while since my last update. I don't want all my followers (currently only 1) to think I'm getting lazy with my Viper restoration. So here's what I've done since I flipped the boat over and removed the old delman and the old drain plug.

1) Filled in old drain plug area.

2) Faired out bottom around keel trunk

3) Filled in hole in keel trunk

4) Sanded bottom around keel trunk and old drain plug

5) Painted area/sand/paint/sand

The bottom is looking pretty good, but it might require one more sand and paint and light sand.

I've also added the GNAV hardware to the boom. It's a pretty awesome looking piece of hardware!

And finally I've added the new trailer racks to make the viper nice and comfy while on the hard.

So I hope you enjoy the pics. I'm extremely happy with how it's coming. Just over a week now and I'll be racing her in Sarnia!

Some more shots from yesterday

Flipped Over/Flipped Off

First off, I have to start this post by thanking Badass, Hyde, Matt and Adrienne. If it wasn't for them I couldn't make this happen.

So yesterday I was finally able to get enough people together to get the viper flipped over. I'd like to say it went really smoothly, but it wasn't as easy as I though. The biggest boat to date that I've flipped is probably a laser 2, and it's not even comparable to this adventure.

In case anyone is interested in doing this in the future, I've got some step by step instructions.

Material needed:

- At leaset 4 people. 5 is better, and 6 is probably ideal.

- 4 used tires

- 2 pool noodles cut length wise.

- case of beer

- bags of munchies

Steps:

1) Position boat (on trailer) into area that is easy to flip a boat. On the grass is better than cement. Make sure you have at least 8 feet of vertical clearance to flip.

2) Position the used tires to the boat will sit right side up on them on the grass.

3) Lift boat off trailer and onto tires. It's easies to set the stern on first and then lift the bow, and have someone move the trailer out from under the boat.

4) Take a rest and drink a beer.

5) Put pool noodles on one side of the gunwhale (side that will be the low side when flipping).

6) Lift the new high side, low side will go down, and put two tires under the low side so there's clearance for the chain plates to clear.

7) have 2 guys on pushing the boat over, and two bracing it as it comes over. Once the boat gets to verticle, move one more guy to the low side. Once boat gets past verticle, move 4th guy to low side.

8) lower boat down onto the tires completely upside down.

9) Take a rest and drink a beer.

10) 4 guys lift boat up (upside down) and cary to where you want the boat to be to work on. the 5th person collects the tires and positions them to where the boat will finally sit.

11) put boat down in final position on the tires.

12) Drink beer 2-4 beers and eat some munchies.

13) Done.

After all my buddies left, I was able to start working on the bottom. I wanted to remove the old drain plug, and to remove the delaminated gelcoat. Attached are some pictures of how that went.

Hi Everyone, sorry I haven't posted in the last few days. Work has been very busy and I haven't been thinking about blogging much.

You're probably wonding if I've done anything lately eh? Well you're in for a treat. I decided to take the old chain plates off the boat. This was something that wasn't originally planned, but I had some extra time (since I ran out of sand paper), so I thought I would give it a shot. What I did was took my dremel too and cut out about a inch of deck around the old chain plate. Once that was done, I had enough space to cut off the chain plate with the dremel using the cutting tool. From there I cleaned out the whole area and filled it back in with thickened epoxy. Then got some more sand paper and sanded it down flush to the deck. I still have to paint but I think it will look really good when done. Check out the pictures so far!

Spin launcher Bar

So just a few updated shots of the spin launcher bar. I sanded down all the excess epoxy and now it's ready for paint.

Foot Chalks and Spin Launcher Bar

So my second full day of renos was very productive. I was able to install the forward foot chalks that Ben Steinberg made for me (Excellent work BTW!). They were very easy to install. I just followed Ben's instructions which he wrote on the inside of the chalks with a sharpie. Have a look at the picture to see my handy work.

From there I decided to try to tackle the spin launcher bar. Now keep in mind my boat work skills could be described as "intermediate at best", so I was a little scared to start the install. Anyway, with the instructions that Jeff Jones wrote on the Viper forums, the intstall wasn't too bad. The hardest part was trimming the bar to the right length to fit. I didn't want to trim too much off and ruin the part, but if I didn't trim enough it wouldn't fit. I just took my time and would trim a little, then test fit, then trim a little more, and test fit, and so on until finally I was able to rubber mallet it into place. From there I started with some thickened epoxy to hold it in place. That's where she stands now until tomorrow after work when I can fill the rest in and fair it out.

So she's really coming together after good weekend worth of work. I'm just about ready to get the boat flipped over to start working on the bottom. That should be fun!

I hope you enjoy the pictures of the work so far.

Darren