Jim's blog

Well another 10 or so hot hours this weekend and I have pretty much all the anti-foul and undercoat stripped from Dovekie's hull. Some small areas still to tackle with a sanding disk. And on Friday the motor was lifted out ready for a cleanup of the engine bay and the new motor to go in. It's sitting beside Dovekie waiting for someone to want it - we'll see what Trademe turns up. Quite a few views of the auction but no action.



Now I need to scrape loose putty from the seams and redo them, sand, undercoat and anti-foul. In between times I'll clean the engine bay and repaint it. I hope sugar soap will clean the oily mess up well.

Last weekend I spent a day and a half and with some help from Gordon have pretty much stripped the starboard side of Dovekie back to wood. There are still a few patches of colour but mostly the paint is gone. My optimistic view that I could have it finished by now was offset by a busier week than normal at work, some rain, and the discovery that the big patches remaining were pretty well stuck in places.


And its hard to see the difference here - but there is a lot of paint still on the port side.


It is odd. Some fairly big areas peel off with little effort and other small areas take awhile. Anyway I have the undercoat and anti-foul ready to go back on once I have done a quick pass over it again with the sander. That shouldn't take long at all as the scrapers have left it pretty smooth.

I have also eased the motor forward to a point where its lifting lug is under the hatch and so it can just be lifted a little, eased forward a little more and lifted out. Hopefully the truck with hiab will do that later this week and I can dive in to cleaning and painting the engine bay in between scraping and painting the outside. Next week I hope the new engine installation can get under way.

I picked this up from Geekzone and likewise quote Rick Shera's article.

Despite Labour and various lobby groups patting themselves on the back, saying a compromise has been reached that makes the amended copyright law workable and fair, it looks like things have in fact taken a turn for the worse.

Please make sure that you read this: Internet law guru Rick Shera is ringing the alarm bell about a completely new provision being introduced into the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill at the very last moment by the Commerce Select Committee.

Called Section 122MA, the provision essentially presumes an account holder is guilty if accused and must prove his/her innocence. Rights holders infringement notices are considered as conclusive evidence however. There is no sanction against rights holders who present erroneous or false evidence in the proposed new law either.

This is really bad from every perspective, and I fully concur with Rick that Section 122MA must be deleted. It's not necessary, not for rights holders, and not for copyright protection either.

As it stands, S122MA can be used maliciously, and applied to not just file sharers.

Update: Rick sent a correction - "The new regime can ONLY be used to target file sharing (you suggest that it could be used for something else).  Section 92C of course has exactly the same problem with guilt on accusation.  Irony is many submitted that the new regime and section 92C should be made consistent.  Little did we know that they would retrofit the new one!"

The irony here is that I remember David Farrar, wearing his InternetNZ hat, saying during the S92A debacle that it was necessary to engage and help shape the new law. If not, something much worse than S92A et al could appear.

Clearly, there have been many, many submissions on the new copyright bill and plenty of public opinion expressed too - and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think anyone with the possible exception of rights holders have advocated that we remove the principle of innocent until found guilty from our laws.

So why did the Select Committee insert Section 122MA? This needs to be explained.

Well I spent a lot of time Saturday and half of Sunday sanding to fair off all the edges of the paint where there were cracks etc. There are a lot of tiny cracks and crazed areas. I cut Sunday's effort short to spend some time with Sammy-J who is now over 16 months old - haven't seen much of him in the last few weeks.

On the way out today I stopped by Resene in Thorndon Quay and had a good chat with Steve about what primer etc to use. I walked out with the anti-foul, primer and undercoat for when I get above the water line in a week or so (optimism...)

Out at Mana I raised the (192kg) motor 50mm onto blocks as a first step in moving it out to allow me to repaint the engine bay before fitting the new motor. Need to decide between the two quotes I have for the motor. There is not much in it really cost wise but one company is much handier to the Mana location so may be easier to deal with although both do work on boats around the Mana Marina.

After raising the motor (and having the exhaust pipe drop onto my finger - ouchhhh) I started a bit of sanding again. Then I thought I would just try the heat gun on the paint again. Unlike the first time I tried it on on the full thickness old stuff, it worked a treat and I stripped a big area on one side back to pretty much bare wood that needs minimal extra work. A light sand and wash off should about do it. I am now thinking of stripping pretty much all of the below waterline area back to bare wood. It will make the next stage much easier and I won't be worried about the tiny cracks etc that I am continually finding, scraping and sanding. I reckon I should be able to have it pretty much stripped to bare wood this coming weekend if I can get in an evening or two this week. Here's hoping.....

I spent yesterday finishing off (pretty well anyway) the messy stripping of the anti-foul from Dovekie. My friends Rob and Gordon spent a good bit of the day sanding and scraping while I did the messy stuff.

I made a couple of long sanding boards and Rob got stuck in with one of those with some success until he stood on the handle I had made and broke it off. Fixed that this morning but on the way back to do a couple of hours sanding I picked up a Worx orbital sander and some sanding pads. I ended up doing most of the waterline on one side and some of the flatter bits too. Looking good. Another day with scraper and sander will probably finish all except some of the more curved parts that will need to be done by hand.

Headed off home early for a quiet 'high tea' celebration of the 60th wedding anniversary of my ex's parents with them, my ex and my kids and grandson. My arms were already starting to notice the sander weight after working at shoulder level for 2 hours.

Last week my business web site for Axenic Ltd went live after a few months of gestation and a week or so of concentrated labour. Thanks to Chris Blunt for his efforts on the content and Plastic Studio for the design work.

I spent most of Saturday stripping more anti-foul from Dovekie, and for a change while waiting for the stripper to work disconnected most of the various wires etc from the old motor. I have done 1 1/2 sides now so another 1/2 day should have the first stage complete - then its a few sessions with sand paper and water to tidy it up.

I have now received the quotes for motor replacement and will have to make a decision on which way to go. There is some difference between them but I have asked some clarifying questions and I think there won't be a lot in it.

On Saturday while chatting with the various people wandering past as I worked, a chap who was working on an old(ish) wood launch nearby stopped to admire(?) my work a couple of times and I thought he looked somewhat familiar. On checking his name it turned out that we used to flat together in Knight's Road, Lower Hutt around 1972-73. Small world isn't it.

And talking of small worlds I have received an email from the last long term owners of Dovekie and will phone them in the next few days to learn what I can of her history. I'd like to know what paint has been used where to minimise the risk of covering with an incompatible one. Most doesn't need stripping back to bare wood.