Once you launch after a big refit you start looking at everything else and it really does your head in, for us it was the varnish. We struggled to get the motivation and got a couple of quotes from people to strip all the outside varnish for us, but while getting the quotes we realised we were shit sick of dealing with workers and what the hell are we thinking let's just get on with it and do it ourselves. After some advise from the old owners we used a paint stripped called "Peel Away" a citric based stripper that didn't hurt your hands or seem to damage the 2 pack paint although we were very careful with it and it did cause a fair bit of stress at the start! Once we got the hang of it though it couldn't have been easier and we had all the outside wood stripped and sanded in 3 days so it wasn't too bad at all. We thought we would give the most expensive varnish in the world a go, Awlgrips Awlwood. You first apply a primer which is also sort of a varnish that goes super hard and you can put a few coats of that on over a few days and sand a lot of the holes out and it comes out pretty good. Then the actual varnish goes on really nice and "we"(I'm not allowed to hold a brush) managed to put 3 coats on a day for 4 days and she came up very nice and shiny indeed. In total I think it was less than 10 days work and only the first 3 were hard days and even those had a few beers in between so all in all it was a lot easier than we thought it would be thanks to the paint stripper and hopefully it will last another 10 years before it all has to be totally stripped again.
Once that was finished it was time to find a marina and pack up Sunflower and we both flew to Bali for my sister's wedding which was absolutely beautiful. Not long after arriving I was of course called by work to get back to Aus so I had to cut my trip short but luckily Julie could stay on for another week. She's now back onboard for the last month and I'm due to fly back next week so it's happy days. On the 18th of November there is a high tide and we should be able to get out of the river without scratching up the bottom over the sandbar so that will give us 10 days once I'm back to get ready. Will be busy as we have a few things to do including fitting a new autopilot but I'm sure we can do it no problem, then maybe back to Belize and catch a few fish while waiting for a good weather window to head for Panama, that's the plan for now anyway ;)
