Winch shelves, deck painting, Owatrol - déjà vu ?

I’ve decided to roll one more layer of deck paint - after all there is lots of wear&tear on deck and while I have it all prepared for painting it would be stupid not to do it properly.

Jim was preparing Kaika for launching on coming Thursday so I had a good company while working.

After deck work I turned to winch shelves. Epoxy has cured over night - my test sample hardened properly and maintained degree of elasticity so all went good. I’ve plugged screw holes with mahogany plugs doped in varnish and then brushed first layer of diluted varnish as a base layer.

New shelves blended nicely with old coamings - I was lucky to find the same type of mahogany for good matching!

After 4-5 layers of varnish these shelves will blend totally with cockpit, as if the boat was born with them. After that I will varnish all again.

Before leaving Meritaten I gave her bottom-shower. Days became warm and sunny so keeping her bottom planks humid became important. To my surprise there was still water under the plastic cover - apparently this concept works quite well to minimise humidity variations.

Same as yesterday - on my way home I turned to my small workshop to apply one more coat of Owatrol to ceiling planks. Mahogany colour becomes deeper with every coat.