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The Contessa Corner → Posts by stefan_d
so im getting ready for hopefully a wednesday launch and im starting to look at my mast - for the first time since i took it off the boat 4 years ago. just wondering how the gooseneck is held in the mast. .looks like it rides in the sail track and is held captive by a few cotter pins thru the sail track? looks like the only thing to me, just wondering if anyone else out there has an older style setup. cheers all
stef
Getting closer to the water!! I'm having to reinstall the engine, and I was wondering what kind of setups there are out there. My problem is that the though hull is 1-1/4 threaded, but the yanmar exhaust elbow and waterlift both are 1 3/4" hose. You can't get a 1.25NPT to 1.75 barb adapter.... Least I cant find one anywhere in bronze. What kind of setups are out there cause I need some ideas!
you'd be surprised at what you can do yourself - its really not all that hard. just requires the pateience to stick with it (surprised i have so far) and the courage to do things to your boat that you'd rather have someone else do.
ivan - all i can say is that refurbishing a contessa even though its 26 feet is a big job. might want to check out williams, or blyachting.com
im still working away at iroquois on mine......
original on my 74 was 3/16 wire. i bought all new sta-loks for 7/32 wire, looking back i might as well have just bought 1/4". 1/4 won't add that much more weight aloft. but i'm stuck with 7/32 when i get around to making a new rig
minney's is a great place, but you might have to have someone fabricate a new mast step.
paint is a last resort - if i could have buffed up my boat i would havae, but it was pretty much white where it used to be dark blue, not to mention that i cut a huge hole in the side of it.
painting a boat the size of a contessa 26 is definately not out of the skill range of most..... boat owners, the time and effort is in the prep work.
all this being said, you will end up dinging, gouging, scratching your new beauty, not necessarily on your own - theres a few boat owners out there that you don't want even catching your lines when youre coming in......
as for the decks, i sanded off all the non skid and am painting with grey perfection and intergrit pellets. i went this route cause i drilled about 75 holes to inject the decks w/ epoxy, and this was by far the easiest way to cover all of my sins. seems to g on o OK
yessir - its amazing how often marine "mechanics" would rather just sell you something new instead of performing some troubleshooting and fixing.
this if course meaning that they can rebuild your "unserviceable" engine and re-sell it to someone else as rebuilt.
the 1gm10 is a little beaut of an engine, just a marinized version of its land based yanmar counterpart. the onlt thing that could render this engine unrebuildabe would be having a bored out cylinder that wears oversize. this engine doesn't have a sleeved block. i'm pretty sure though, that you could sleeve it after it's been bored out and put a stock sized piston back in. 5000 hours of service out of a maintained motor should be a peice of cake
well its a bit late but i'd just like to say that it was sure nice to meet some of you other folks out there who aren't interested in a hunter 45 centre cockpit. thanks again to adrian for keeping this online community alive. i sure am looking forward to more beers with more contessa people, hopefully in the water somewhere. 10 weeks till work on boat season.......
2pm at the boathouse sounds good. i'll be there!
if someone could come up with a 3d solid model of a half a contessa (pro e part or otherwise) i could machine it out. that could be kind of neat......
yeah im already marked in for the cheap hotel deal..... can't beat it!
anyone going on the first saturday the 12th?
yeah i'll be there too. maybe i'll find everyone this time....
if you're going with stainless outfitters 1) don't be in a hurry, 2) if you're getting a 4 leg bowrail and have the older style fwd casting then make sure that they leave the front legs long and cut them to fit after.
what does this (realistically) make my contessa worth??
paintng the hull deck joint on a 26 would be about as effective as ........ if you look in the depths of the gallery theres a cross section that I cut out - it's a vertical flange, hull on the inside, deck on the outside. riveted together. the best thing to do to keep water out of this is remove the rubrail and seal up the joint with either epoxy and filler (what i did) or a polyurethane sealant (sika, 5200 etc)
well the pics are up, you can't see the dry spots but I know where they are.... all I can say is that if you ever have the gumption to paint a sailboat, then do it. and if the critix show up (they will), tell them kindly that after 2 or 3 years of missed approaches that they are more than welcome to show up and repaint your boat. cheers all. she's getting closer and closer to a spring launch.. finally........
concrete??? what year is your contessa?
the only problem with painting is that if you knock off a decent job, you'll see every little imperfection. i had 2 coats of primer, and it felt babys butt smooth and looked really good, but after painting the print thru still shows up. you can even see where the old decals were on the bow (name). you can see the hard spots in the hull where the chainplates are, and you can see every dimple 2" below the hull deck joint where the hull is riveted to the deck. that goes part in parcel with a dark glossy finish.... as for the decks, i sprayed 2 coats of primer over the whole thing, and then sprayed perfection off white, mixed 50 50 with flattering agent for all of the "smooth" parts. i'm now rolling on light grey with the intergrip grit mixed in for all the non skid. it's working quite well, pretty uniform distribution of sand but you can see the odd roller mark.... i'll tell you in 2 years if it was tough enough.......
perfection is a pretty easy paint to work with. you'll hear people call it imperfection, but i personally think that most of the work is in the prep. i'm not the smarted cat out there, but I can read the directions and follow them and it turned out ok... you can screw up a job with sterling paint if you halfass the prep...... i've never painted anything bigger than a snowblower in my life, and i got a relatively decent spray job down. it's better than any other homemade paint job i've seen, and i don't have $8 000 into it. theres 3 or 4 decetn sags, and I dont think i'm going to touch them at all.
if you get checking on the internet, theres all kinds of different paint you can use - awlgrip, awlcraft, imron, jet-glo, perfection, etc etce etc. the main thing being that they're 2 part polyurethanes. theres 2 kinds, acrylic and polyester based but i'll leave that fact finding mission up to you.
man, it's sure a lot of work to bring them back though................................ i dont know sometimes what keeps me going but she's going to be a hell of a boat when its done. and she's got dry decks. not just a looker....
they sure don't fit the modern productio mantra of build something wide, bolt on a keel, a marginal rig, spartan equipment, charge 100 grand. beneteau used to make a decent boat, in france, but anything i've seen at the boat shows in recent years leave me wondering if anyone actually sails these things anymore.
I used Interlux Perfection, Mauritius blue. I sprayed 2 coats of 404 epoxy primer, sanded the first with 180 and the second with 220. As for the painting, what you see is 1 tack coat + medium wet coat allowed to tack (1/2 hr) and then a full wet coat overtop. The whole painting part only took about 2.5 hours. I guess you could call it 1.5 coats of paint. I had an air dryer hooked up, just a princes auto job with dessicant pellets in it. The paint flowed in for about 4 hours and then was good and hard in 3-4 days. It really glossed over in the first 12 hours of drying - was way shinier the next morning. I scrweed up a bit with the reducer - I used a 50/50 mix of 2316 and 2333, and I think this allowed the paint to flow out a bit too much, it started running in 1 spot about 15 minutes after I layed the coat on. Not too worried tho, I'll either buff it out and blow in some more paint, or just leave it cause you'll never see it from the water
316 is the more corrosion resistant, 304 has the higher yield strength but is less corrosion resistant.
unlike fin keel boats out there, there is no way for the keel to separate from the hull. the hull is the keel, if you think about it. the ballast is completely encapsulated inside the hull. if you were to think of a keel as an appendage thats bolted underneath the hull, then the contessa doesn't have a keel, it's all hull. if you were to think of a keel as a waterfoil shape that provides lateral resistance then the contessa has a keel. but really it's all the hull.
i;d go over the gouges closely, making sure that they're not too deep, and looking for any major damage. depending on how deep the gouges are, you'll fill them up with some filler perhaps (vc watertite sands easy and is great), leaving the scrath/gouge still a little concave - then you can fill the rest of the scratch with gelcoat that you have to mix up (getting the colour is the hard part) trying to keep the gelcote as flush or fair with the hull as you can. depending on how full you get the scratches, you can wetsand (1000-1200) and then compound the repair and buff the hell out of it. thats about it. other than painting. and trust me, after al lthat work i'd rather buff all day on gelcoat.
The Contessa Corner → Posts by stefan_d
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