January 31, 2013

Busy Summer, busy fall and starting to be a busy winter. Since the last update in May, we had Jimmy LaBrie come over and paint the bottom. I turned her over and painted all the compartments that will be covered up by the deck. Then, it was time for deck battens. For those of you who have done decks before, you know that it really takes time to be sure everything is nice and faired.

So it's been time to start fitting hardware and getting things lined up to getting ready to put down the deck. I decided to put in modern deck hatches rather than the "pie eyes" that were originally on the boat...more room to work and it will look, in my humble opinion, better.

Fitting plywood decking

So, I thought I had nailed down the color. As it turns out, one of the people who did some painting on the Streaker when she was racing was Dale Vanweiringen. Dale calls the other day and says, "I found a folder that had Dalton Coors name on it." "It's got the paint codes inside, you want them?" Uh, yeah! "chrome yellow" was right next to 59119 which turns out to be the color Dale had down. Oh well, it looks like the bottom will be a shade lighter than the deck and non-trips. It's nice to know I got the right color tho...

Well, I couldn't help myself, (this is what just about everyone I talk to who is doing a restoration says...) I haven't quite finished fairing all the battens, but the ones I did, I just HAD to see what it would look like with decking on it. So I rough cut a couple of sheets and screwed them down to see what I had. Now I'm even more excited to finish up the fairing and get the deck down. Starting to look like a hydroplane again!