Greetings from King Harbor Cal 20 fleet 5

With the holidays behind us, it’s time to get the covers off the boats and get them ready for the race season. At the King Harbor Yacht Club dry boat storage yard in late January, we started getting ready with a fleet workday. The big job of the day was the installation of a couple of kelp windows.

Anyone who has sailed a Cal 20 in the Santa Monica bay, or wherever the kelp is, knows that a window is a vital part of the boat. The window lets you see why the boat is going so slow.

But first, Ray McVey and I needed to put a new race bottom on our boats while others drained the remnants of the last rainstorm out of their boats, and others were making sure the beer never sat in one place for too long.

We got started real early in the morning preparing the boats for new bottom paint. Ray had actually painted the first coat on his boat the day before. So he drank coffee while I sanded my boat. After sanding, washing and taping the boat we got to painting. We chose to roll the paint on so we could get a nice thick coat, knowing that we would be sanding most of it off to get that smooth race bottom. We should have sprayed it on.

Once the paint was on and drying, the focus changed to the kelp windows. With the boats ready and the owners convinced that it would be ok, we started drilling holes, not small ones either; 3 inches in diameter. The first boat to get the window was Terry Taugner’s boat, hull #2 Poco Loco. With the location checked and rechecked then checked again, I started drilling.

Terry seemed to be pretty calm about the whole job, probably because I put a window in my boat last year and it’s still floating. With the hole drilled and cleaned, the next target was Rod Zapf’s boat. After both holes were in and ready for the windows, it was time to mix the West System. I use the laminating filler mixed in the West System. I also put masking tape on both sides of the windows to keep the surfaces free of epoxy. Once the windows were in place we used tape to hold them in place.

With the windows in and the paint drying it was CORONA TIME. Thanks to Dyan Beven we had cold beer, chips and dip. Also thanks to the other fleet members for letting me drill holes in their boats. Someone said that this was a good way to control your competition. I thought the whole day was a great way to get the fleet together and a fun way to get ready for the season.