On completing Pouláki I mentioned to Kurt, my boat building teacher, that I hadn’t realised how much sanding was required. “Aye” he quipped, “If you don’t like sanding, don’t build a boat." I wish he’d said that at the beginning!
 

When Pouláki safely arrived in Greece, I honestly thought she was nearly finished. The hulls were made, everything had had two coats of epoxy. Not much more to do, I thought. Probably get it all done in a week, 10 days at most, then I can get on with the main jobs on Pérdika. How wrong I was, the month we’d set aside to get Pérdika ready for her global trip was completely eaten up by finishing Pouláki. It became an obsession. She’s called Pouláki partly because it’s the diminutive form of Pérdika. Pérdika means Partridge or a Greek game bird and Pouláki means “little bird”. But she’s also called Pouláki because coincidentally Lakki is our base in Greece, it feels like our second home and I just had to launch Pouláki in Lakki and sail her on her maiden voyage, across Lakki bay come what may!



So what took so long? Well to make the boat look good and more importantly survive the salt water and very high UV environment she will be subjected to, the hull required two coats of epoxy, two coats of primer, five coats of top coat paint and eight coats of varnish on the bare wood parts. Each coat requires 24 hours to cure, then sanding and wiping down with acetone to be ready for the next coat. Jeez, that was a labour of love. I’m not keen on painting and dislike it marginally more than sanding, so I sanded and Rachael painted. Sounds easy but each coat of paint or varnish seems to produce its own set of drips which never quite appear until they set hard, then they need careful sanding to remove just the drip and not the layer below. It didn’t help that we were doing all this work outside in a dusty boatyard beside the shower block. That meant a stream of passers by full of encouraging and appreciative remarks, but each demanding a long chat.