Even though Celina came ready to sail with many features for long distance sailing it was still necessary to do some modifications. Most importantly was a new antifouling. Celina´s hull grew quite a few barnacles in the last year and so it was time to scratch them off. At the same time I planned to have a new livery painted.
The place we chose was Arenal in the bay of Palma. It was ideally located and reasonably priced. Since Celina was at anchor in Palmanova we had to sail her across the bay of Palma in excellent sailing conditions. The next morning I motored her into the harbor and we had her lifted out of the water the first time after I purchased her. Despite the huge amount of barnacles the hull looked really good. After she was cleaned by the port staff she was placed on the dry dock where she will spend the next few weeks.
The waterline was taped and thereafter we started to sand Celina´s hull. What a nightmare this job should turn out to become. I was supported by Franz and both our dads but still this sanding job was not easy. The first square meter took me almost two hours and with 39 more to go this could end up in a disaster. So we looked for tools with more power. Luckily we found professional sanding machines in the port with 40 grid paper. The hull was not sanded in quite a long time and new anti fouling layers were applied just over the old ones. At the end I counted five layers of paint and to remove that it took us six full days. Crazy.
You can imagine how happy we were once we finished this hard and stupid work. But it was absolutely necessary since we found three rather big spots with osmosis on the star board side. After We had them sanded to the fiberglass layer I let them dry out and applied new fiberglass and thickened epoxy. A few days later we were ready to paint. Our choice of antifouling was Hempel´s Silic One. It is the most eco friendly antifouling which does not release any sort of biocide into the seawater. Instead it creates a water film that makes the hull so smooth preventing harmful organism sticking to it.
In between painting I started to concentrate on the stern. It had a few dents from the previous owners which needed attention. At the same time I got rid of lots of holes which were either used for ladders or other outlets which were not in use anymore. This part was rather a creative one and was quite enjoyable.
Franz and his dad took care of a new cable for the gearbox and a new thrust lever was installed as well. Toilet pumps were inspected and greased, through holes were checked and found ok and the windows needed re-sealing.
Unfortunately the most intensive work was painting the hull. My choice of paint, namely the manufacturer was bad. We applied more than five layers of paint but it still looked awful. So after sanding everything again we applied the newly purchased Perfection boat paint. And after the first layer it had the kind of perfection I hoped for from the very beginning. In total we applied two layers. I was sooo happy with the result.
We had changed Celina from an average looking boat into a great looking sailing boat.
After six very intense weeks of hard work we finally were able to put here back into the water. You cannot imagine our joy.
Sailing Celina 