"Serenity Now" Has Been Reborn in East Hampton

By David Rattiner

3 minute 05/29/2013

The damage has finally been fixed to the bow of my sailboat, “Serenity Now” and the process of fixing it myself could not have been more rewarding.

I recently wrote about how I installed a new rub rail on my 1975 O’Day 25 sailboat. That process was a lot of work, but I was fairly confident I could do it. Fixing fiberglass damage on the front however was not something I was all that confident with, but I think the fix came out pretty good.

The damage, which happened from the boat smashing into the dock from not being tied up strong enough during a storm (that’s my story anyway), was fixed using Marine Tex, which is amazing stuff, recommended to me by our Technology Director here at Dan’s, Dennis Rodriguez.

The process took about three days. First I sanded away at the damaged area and chipped out with a hammer all of the excess fiberglass. Then I mixed up the Marine Tex, which is activated by combining two different chemicals that come with the product. Very carefully, I pasted it on the damage. When I was done, I waited two days for epoxy to cure.

After that was more sanding. I was nervous about painting the area because I have zero experience painting the the boat.

I mixed up some white and blue paint and did everything I could to match up the color of the sailboat with the color of the paint I was using. I didn’t use any type of special paint. I just used basic acrylic paint, and I’m sure this was a terrible idea, but it seems to be holding up so far.

After a lot of experimentation with the colors, I finally got a color that matched decently. I then let the paint dry, sanded the area again, then painted it again. Here what the end result is. Not bad right?

Finally, I decided that this year it was time to have a respectable looking decal on the bow that displays the boats name. At the stern, I have a few stickers that read “Serenity Now” but they are block stickers and don’t look very professional.

My fiancee designed the decal, and again I was nervous to place it on the boat, but it was fairly straight forward. All I had to do was run the decal across the boat, apply a little applicator, wait, then peel it off carefully.

“Serenity Now” has been reborn in East Hampton!