A Few Troubles in Solla Sollew

In the Dr. Seuss book after which our boat is named, Solla Sollew is a place where there are no troubles, or at least very few. Well, we’ve had a few troubles, and in the world of boats, they are unfortunately not “very few”. For short attention spans, I will skip to the end and tell you that we are temporarily repaired, back in the water, and have options for the next round of repairs in 6-9 mos., after a season cruising in Mexico.

Almost exactly 2 years ago, Harry and I had our steel sailboat sandblasted all the way down to bare metal, and then he and I applied 10+ coats of epoxy-based primer to the hull followed by regular bottom paint. (We did the topsides too, but that’s not relevant to this story). It was an exhausting, painful, toxic, and expensive process, but we were hopeful it wouldn’t have to be repeated for ~20 years. After we left Emeryville in February, Harry started diving/cleaning the hull himself (vs. a diver) and noticed “blisters”. They look just like they do on skin – little bubbles in the paint. They are common on a certain vintage of fiberglass boats. On steel boats, they are very uncommon and can mean differing but all significant issues. The range of potential problems went like this: 1. Best Case – something went wrong with one of the many primer coats we applied, but after the 2nd coat (bad mix, too little time between coats), 2. Bad Case – something went wrong with the first and/or second coats and they didn’t “stick” to the metal, 3. Worst Case – nothing is wrong with the paint, but something is wrong in the electrical currents of the boat and is causing the paint to bubble. We had always planned on hauling out in Southern California for a bottom job, but this blister thing got us worrying. More and more boat yards are no longer allowing owners to do their own work, which translates to $$$$$ in labor. Even in the best-case scenario, the (wo)man hours to fix would be high. In the bad or worst case, they’d be astronomical. As such, we decided to haul out in Ensenada where we couldn’t do our own work, but the labor rate was a fraction of what it is in San Diego.

After an uneventful passage, we arrived at Baja Naval in Ensenada. The boat was hauled and we stared in dismay at hundreds, literally hundreds of these blisters. We quickly discovered we were looking at the “Bad Case” – when we popped them they went all the way down to bare metal. The only good news is that the metal was clean, no rust or any other sign of decay. After much discussion with the yard, the decision was made to pop and fill all of the bigger blisters, and leave the smaller ones alone. The other option was a full sandblast all the way down and 12 new layers of paint). The former allows us to see if the patched blisters hold. The next time we haul out, we can decide if it makes sense to pop and fill the rest, or if the next yard can do a full sandblast and paint for a reasonable amount of money. We simply weren’t prepared financially or emotionally to start over now.

It was a pretty darn depressing couple of days, as all of this news sunk in, but the yard worked hard and fast and our final bill was about 7k less than it would have been in the states (and we would’ve been up dry longer too – which is a pain when living aboard). It’s been fun to run around Ensenada where living expenses are a lot lower, and tonight I get to paint our faces for Dia de los Muertos 😊
Tomorrow we will start heading south down the coast of Baja. Our first stop is a small island about 150 miles south, San Jeronimo. We will take our time as we head to Cabo/La Paz – we’ve been told by everyone that this is an incredible coastline. Plus, it’s high-time we actually start cruising…enjoying this little vessel of ours that has taken so much moola, blood, sweat & tears!