Hull & bottom

Patching from the dock

In June 2022 I sanded the scratches on the topsides and filled them. No delamination, which was good news.

Then twice more on the bow and the starboard side. Next time, just a light sanding and primer.

Then the starboard patches got primed with Interlux Pre-Kote, right under the toe rail. The weather was crazy, 100 °F and up. Heavy orange peel, but at least they're covered from UV.

Plastic fittings on the thru-hulls

In December 2022 I went to add a second clamp to the engine cooling water hose, and found a polypropylene (I hope), or maybe even PVC, hose-to-pipe fitting with a short barb. There was no room for a second clamp, and it had to go ASAP. The local store had no bronze or Marelon hose adapters, only nylon or brass. For obvious reasons I took nylon, as a temporary fix, and ordered bronze. There's one more to change, 1-1/2 inch, and that one will be a big challenge.

Two weeks later the new bronze adapters were in. Yes, it's a rat's nest, but the boat's in the water, and I don't see a way to redo it. Only one plastic adapter was left.

Delamination in the cockpit locker

In March 2023 I repaired the starboard cockpit locker area: re-glassed two walls and rebuilt a delaminated area of the hull.

Then I finished building up the laminate there.

Where is the mast ground?

In September 2022 I emptied the holding tank, mostly because I wanted to get under the compression post and see how the mast is grounded. Disappointment! No access from under the holding tank to the compression post or the shower drain. Nothing. Just a nice fiberglass second floor under the tank. The locker floor is actually higher than the cabin floor. What now? Probably drill a BIG hole to get under there, and maybe glass it back.

The answer came three years later, at the boatyard. I put in a lightning ground plate: 3 feet by 4 inches, on the port side of the hull. To drill as close to the mast as possible I had to take the gray water tank out of its locker, and getting the sanitation hoses off was hard. The plate is held by two 1/2-inch bronze bolts, one under the waste tank and one under the cabin sole beneath the table, bedded in 3M 5200, pressed to the hull and left for a week.

In March 2026 I ran a 4 AWG cable from the mast to the ground plate under the black water tank. For now it just hangs from the top. Later I'll make wood trim to hide it a bit. Not perfect, but it's safety, and I like to be safe.

In April 2026 I measured the trim to cover the lightning ground wire.

Then I put a plank next to the compression post to route the cable. Before the black water tank went back, I closed the access hole to the ground plate bolt with a 3-inch rubber plug, which fits well, and routed the cable with no sharp bends. And yes, it's duct tape, but good enough to hold a bend radius of about 8 inches.

First days on the hard

November 2025. First we pressure-washed the bottom. At first glance there were only two big blisters. First glances lie. The work team: me and my son Vic. Great thanks to him.

I opened some of the biggest ones. The "water" (resin soup) had collected under the first layer of chopped mat, right under the gelcoat. That first layer of mat looks like it was laid dry. I'm not sure if that's osmosis or just how the boat was built. And the port side has lots of little craters that look more like gelcoat voids than blisters.

Here's the starboard side, before we dug in.

By the end of day one I had ground open every real and possible blister, and the count was getting close to 50–60. Vic worked on the old bottom paint and got about a third of one side done.

Day 2: our work area, and half of starboard sanded.

The strut and the keel

The strut wasn't sitting tight, so I dug out its mounting and found a pretty interesting solution. The bronze strut sits in a slot in the skeg and is through-bolted, with the bolts and nuts hidden in a cavity in the skeg, covered with plywood and glassed over. The problem: one bolt wasn't tight at all.

Then the keel. All around it I found a very intriguing hairline crack. I opened it up to see what was going on. As far as I knew, my keel has encapsulated ballast with no bolts, so I assumed the keel was molded in one piece with the hull. But what I found doesn't fit that. The keel was made separately and then attached to the hull. But how? Asking on the forum didn't help. Anyway, the keel is solid: no movement between hanging in the slings and standing on the keel. So I'll just patch it, maybe with 1–2 layers of glass.

I also found three pretty heavy hits on the hull at the waterline. One was so deep that, chasing the end of the delamination, I went all the way through the hull and made a hole. And there were a couple of smaller hits.

A deer at 70 mph

On the way home after that weekend I met a deer, an adult deer, on Highway 290 at 70 mph. No time to brake. It appeared maybe 30–40 feet ahead. Luckily I swerved instead of braking and ended up with a couple of dents in the fender and the passenger door, "below the waterline". Mostly the deer hit me, not the car hitting it. Apparently blisters weren't enough damage for one weekend.

Nine days of grinding and glass

Then came the nine-day marathon. A whole day of sanding the bottom paint down to clean gelcoat. Vic did the big surfaces, and I opened and marked the small blisters. And there were a lot. By the evening starboard was done, and port was started.

Lots of small voids in the gelcoat. Not all of them were real blisters, but it's better to patch them. Lots of dust, lots of work.

The hole at the waterline got 4 + 2 layers of 1708 to start, in epoxy, small pieces to big to build thickness. The hull is about 7 mm there, so six layers of 1708 (1.17 mm each) should be OK. I know I should follow the original layup, but the boat is 50 years old, the company is gone, nobody knows exactly how it was built, and at first look it's mostly chopper gun with one heavy mat inside. The shallow damage next to it got only two layers.

The deep blisters got 1–2 layers of 1708 (I'm lazy). Anything no deeper than the gelcoat just got TotalFair epoxy putty. The first round of putty and glass was done on starboard.

Then lots of sanding, especially on the glassed damage. Seven layers was a bit too much, and I had to grind off about 1.5 mm of solid glass over a square foot.

Sanding, a lot of sanding. Patching, sanding, patching. One more day, one more gallon of putty.

The old one-part paint patches on the topsides had to come off. First I tried TotalBoat TotalStrip. It works, but strangely: it only bubbles the paint at the edges of the painted area. My two theories: the paint had cured really hard over the years, or they used a one-part primer under a two-part paint. Maria applied it, cleaned an inch or two around the edge, applied it again, and repeated. Hard and slow, for an area of about 30 by 60 inches. So I switched to sanding and used the stripper only to check that the area was really clean.

Out with the old thru-hulls

The original thru-hulls were 50-year-old bronze with gate valves, so new Marelon ball seacocks were going in. I also split the cockpit drains into two separate thru-hulls, with no more long hose.

Step 1: take out the old ones. About three hours went into solving the puzzle of what order to take the plumbing apart in, then fighting with old threads.

Step 2: glass over the old holes. Four layers of 1708 from outside the first day, more the next.

Then three more layers from outside and three from inside.

Vic started the first sanding pass on the topsides and took off the decorative stripes and the decals. We found a 10–15 square-foot area on starboard, plus the transom, that had been repainted with one-part paint, so it had to be sanded off or stripped before any two-part primer. And I tried to pull the prop with a clamp. No luck; I need to make a puller.

More sanding and patching: the last pass on starboard, and the final-final one on port. We moved the stands and cleaned the bottom under them, and found a relatively big, deep blister on starboard that needed glass. The bow got sanded to finish.

Topsides, guide coat and one more giant blister

Guide coat, then Vic hand-sanded with a long board. Not bad in general, but the area someone had patched before I bought her is pretty bumpy. I sanded the lows on port and put on fairing compound.

The transom: all the "toys" off, the one-part paint removed, and the whole surface sanded flat. Four holes from mounts I couldn't find a reason for were glassed over, plus two spots where the swim ladder hits the transom and the area around the LPG locker vents.

Looking over the barrier coat, I saw small "drips" where the hull was "crying", right next to a stand pad. I opened that blister, and it turned into about a square foot, 3–4 mm deep. I cleaned it, force-dried it and glassed it over with three layers of 1708.

I finally decided on two separate hoses for the cockpit drains, crossed: the starboard drain to the port thru-hull, and port to starboard. Crossed hoses get a bit in the way of reaching the steering, but the thru-hulls have ball valves, so I can take the hoses off if I really need to.

I made backing plates on my CNC. All the holes were drilled, then the 10 mm G10 backing plates were set in West System thickened with 404 and 403 fibers. Next, glassing them in.

The propeller, cleaned and polished as much as I could.

The week before Christmas

December 20: sanding the fairing on the topsides. Lots of sanding, until all the guide coat was gone. I mixed another coat of barrier coat, then realized we needed to sand the whole bottom first, so that moved; the second coat went on later. Maria tried on the paint hood. WAY too small.

December 21: priming the topsides, two coats in one day. Maria inspecting the work early in the morning. THE LAST blister glassed and puttied. The transom took a lot of putty: no really deep voids, but lots of shallow imperfections and old fish eyes. Me sanding the transom.

Then we sanded the barrier coat between coats. It was warm and we weren't sanding glass, so no hazmat suits, just a positive-pressure mask. Me after sanding. Then two coats of topside primer, the second one almost in the dark.

December 22: the third coat of primer. Me and my wife Maria.

Then the cutless bearing. A poor man's puller: a piece of 1/2-inch pipe fitting, a long bolt and some washers. Works excellently. DON'T FORGET TO UNDO THE SET SCREWS. The old one out, the new one pushed in, almost there. Here's the cutless bearing for an Irwin 34 '78. The day was over, time to go home. And the fishing boat docks next to the yard.

December 23: glassing the thru-hull backing plates, redoing a bulkhead's tabbing, and the HVAC raw water pump. I dry-fit the pump as compactly as possible. For the bulkhead tabbing I filled the gap between the liner, the bulkhead and the hull with foam to support the glass, then put four layers of 1708 on epoxy. The HVAC thru-hull backing plate and the strainer mount got glassed in. A new 100 Ah LiFePO4 battery replaced the old lead one. Final-final fairing on the topsides, and the strut bolt holes closed with PVC plugs and puttied.

December 26: final prep. December 27: the first coat of topside paint. A LOT of cleaning first: scuff with 320, wash with soap, rinse with clean water, dry, wipe twice with alcohol, then a tack cloth. AND THEN paint.

The paint that went dull

December 28: the second coat on the topsides and the first coat of bottom paint. Overnight, spider webs all over the yard.

In the morning, a surprise: the transom was completely flat, not glossy, and full of runs, and starboard had two big flat spots from condensation. Lots of air bubbles in the first coat too. But overall it was still better than the night before. We decided to put on at least one coat of bottom paint, so we sanded the bottom too. Light sanding of the bad spots on top, and the whole wash cycle again: soap, water, alcohol, tack cloth.

The first coat of TotalBoat Spartan went on the bottom. Only one, because we ran out of rollers.

Update: the painting was NOT a success. The humidity jumped around 8 PM, six hours after we painted, and the gloss went spotty. Next weekend, a third coat, but this time with a tent and a big heater to stop the condensation.

It was heartbreaking. The first two coats had looked absolutely cool, and then all that work (and money) on the topsides came out very poor.

I know Alexseal Topcoat 501 is humidity sensitive. But Interlux Perfection is too, and that went well, so I figured that if I gave the paint a full 12 hours at 25 °C and about 70% humidity, it would be dry enough to handle the morning dew and fog. NO. The "morning dew" came Sunday evening, and fog covered the yard all night. The paint couldn't dry enough, and about 30% of the surface went from high gloss to dull matte.

So I changed strategy. We sanded and washed the previous coat the day before, and on Saturday morning, as soon as the dew dried, wiped with IPA and a tack cloth and started painting. Happy faces after the third coat. We finished at about 11 AM instead of 2–3 PM, so we gained four hours. But even that wasn't enough to dry.

The datasheet says that without accelerator the paint is "tape dry" in 24 hours at 25 °C, 30 hours at 20 °C, and fully cured in 14–18 days. After two failures I trust those numbers. But it says nothing about when it can handle getting wet. Waiting 14 days in a controlled environment isn't practical, so I decided to at least keep condensation off it through the tape-dry period.

A tent the size of a small hangar

Remember, it's winter near Houston, in an open boatyard: 15–25 °C and 85% humidity in the day, 10–15 °C and 100% at night, heavy fog almost every morning and soaking dew overnight.

So I built a tent and heated it with a big 75,000 BTU kerosene blower. It's simple to say "a tent for a 34-foot boat". It comes out the size of a small hangar, like 40 x 25 feet and 16 feet tall, with at least three sides and a roof. It also had to go up fast (under 2 hours), be light, easy to buy and dirt cheap (one-time use), handle 10 knots of wind (the forecast), go up over a freshly painted boat without touching the sides, and be put up and taken down by two people.

I did it. The shopping list:

• 28 pieces of 10-foot, 1-inch PVC conduit for 7 arches (returnable).
• 16 pieces of 1/2-inch PVC conduit for ribs along the long sides (returnable).
• 4 steel spikes to anchor it (returnable).
• 4 tarps, 29 x 39 feet, for the sides. 1 tarp, 20 x 18 feet, for the back wall. 1 tarp, 10 x 8 feet, as a skirt at the front to keep the hot air in (all returnable).
• Zip-ties, masking tape so the joints don't slide, a couple of rolls of rope.

Most of it can be "rented" from the store and returned, since nothing wears out. I rented the heater from Home Depot for $27 a day, and it burned 15 gallons of kerosene overnight: three 5-gallon cans at $35 each. Building the tent took a little over 2 hours.

Here's Vic tying the tarp to the mast. A tent the size of a small house. Only the last two arches are pinned to the ground. The middle ones are just zip-tied to the tarp, and the tarp holds them in place lengthwise. To keep it from flying away, I bought the tarps oversized, so the extra makes "ears" on the ground, weighed down with heavy wood blocks (the yard has them everywhere) and my toolboxes.

At about 10 PM it dropped to 15 °C outside, and the wind came up to about 10 knots, and I saw that the heater couldn't hold 20 °C with only three sides closed. So I went to the store for one more tarp.

I didn't put the heater inside. It "shoots" air in from outside, and I left the tent mouth open around it. There were several reasons. If the heater catches fire, the tent and the boat don't catch right away. The exhaust is really hot, and there's no point testing what the boat can take. And most important: burning kerosene makes water as well as CO2, and in a closed space that pushes the humidity up. Mixing the heater output with cold outside air, which holds less water, keeps the humidity under control.

At the coldest moment, 4:22 AM, it was about 14 °C outside, with condensation everywhere, and inside the tent I held almost 20 °C and 60% humidity. The morning brought good news: the paint had survived the first night without damage!

The next night was foggy, with lots of condensation, but by then the paint was dry, and nothing happened. SUCCESS CONFIRMED.

Bottom paint, rudder and the last details

Meanwhile we put on the second and third coats of bottom paint. Nothing to photograph. Only one lesson: the Irwin 34 takes about a gallon of TotalBoat Spartan per coat with a 3/16 roller.

The rudder: the stock was cleaned and polished. I opened the skin and checked the foam: no water, no moisture, and the metal inside is fine. There were small cracks in the glass around the stock, so I Dremeled out about 1/4 inch around and 1/4 inch deep and filled it with West System and 403 and 404 fillers, to seal and grip the stock.

Then a weekend of putting things back. The rudder went in with new packing, and the quadrant, the autopilot arm and the rudder sensor went back on. The strut was realigned with the shaft. The drive shaft, the prop and the dripless seal went in. Then the thru-hulls for the cockpit, the engine, the HVAC and the HVAC discharge, with the cockpit drain hoses crossed, starboard to port and port to starboard. Yes, I still have 90° fittings there. There's just not much space on a 34-footer, and the water heater has to go where that black pad is. The HVAC strainer, pump, hoses and wiring went back, and so did the transom parts: the swim ladder, the nav light and the chainplate.

The waterline: masking tape, a light coat of the white topside paint along the edge to seal it, then, the next day, a coat of blue. Fingers crossed there's no bleed under the edge. One more coat next week.

The strut bolts were tightened, and the recesses plugged with PVC plates and patched with epoxy putty. A rough patch for now; glass and finish next weekend.

Then a week of no work: the Texas ice storm.

She got her name

The boat's name coming to reality, a simulation for now.

Then it was mocked up on the hull, and the waterline was painted.

The last bottom paint went on the port side of the keel. The strut cavity was closed, glassed and given its first coat of bottom paint. The rudder and the stand pad spots were painted.

February 2026: I put the registration numbers, the name and the home port on the hull. She's an antique boat, so I could skip the Texas numbers, but I decided it's "polite" to show them and avoid extra questions. Starting that day, she is 100% officially VIRA.

And just for the future: I "scanned" the hull with the iPhone LiDAR tool, so now I have an .stl file of the Irwin 34 hull shape, plus side and back projections.

Small things that last weekend:

• WE MEASURED THE BRIDGE. WE CAN GET UNDER IT!
• Cleaned, primed and bottom-painted the stainless rudder bearing bracket.
• Checked engine and gearbox oil, started the engine.
• Put back the cockpit locker hinge and the fuel tank vent.
• Documentation number on the hull inside, glassed over, and on the main bulkhead in epoxy.
• Sealant on the inside of the ground plate bolts. Cable gland by the mast ready for wires.
• Cotter pin on the prop nut, anode on the shaft, Lanocote on the shaft and prop.
• Measured underwater. Draft is 4 ft 2 in, with the centerboard up. From the keel bottom to the deck is 9 feet, so from the waterline to the mast base is 5 feet.

In March, in the water at Kemah, I filled the front water tank to check the waterline. Simple, if you have a second person on the valve. Mine ended up flooding the V-berth, and I had to rescue the cushions. But I checked it: the painted waterline came out exactly where it should be.