About Ms Bettencourt

Ms Bettencourt is a Swedish built 25-foot trailerable trawler. Her hull was completed in 1971, No. 1117 of about 2500 built. The boat is named for my wife Dia, whose maiden name is Bettencourt.

This little vessel came to me as a gift in 2004. Before then she had been abandoned about 12 years on the Savannah River near Augusta, GA. I have repaired and refitted the boat extensively, and I have cruised her along the East coast of the US, from Cape Lookout, NC, to the Florida Keys. I dream of taking her to Havana some day.

This blog started in 2011 to chronicle the building of a hard top for the boat to replace leaky canvas. Since then the blog has become an Albin-25 boatkeeping and cruising journal.


Saturday, August 10, 2013

Chemicals fail...

...and the dashboard is still a mess. The chemical paint stripper I had hoped would ease the job of refinishing Ms. Bettencourt's dashboard doesn't work. The Georgia heat and humidity exceeds the product's application parameters. Temperatures here have been in the high 90s for days. The chemical gel stripper just makes a lot of evil fumes and a few paint blisters, then dries up and hardens. Even night-time applications fail.

There's another paint removal strategy I have hesitated to deploy: The heat gun.  Using the heat gun will require wearing a respirator and other protective gear, guaranteed to be very uncomfortable under burning sun and blanketing humidity.

Rain is expected next week. If things cool off, I'll take up the heat gun and a hand scraper and get back to work.

Meanwhile, thanks for looking in. If anyone has any better ideas for this job, I would sure like to hear them. Please use the comments box below.


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