Just as we returned from a superb family holiday in the Lake District at the end of last month, we were met with the news of one of our team and lifelong dear friend Steve Hanson had been blue lighted by ambulance to hospital with a life changing health issue. Steve has helped so much with the build of Longbow and is one of those people who simply cannot sit still, he is either working a silly amount of hours, or on with several projects including our jet hydroplane build. The good news is that he is now out of hospital and back home on an enforced rest and recuperation program for which of course we wish him the very best on his road to recovery.
If that wasn’t bad enough, just as we were raring to get on with applying the top coats of paint to the underside of the hull of Longbow another major headache presented itself and that was with the topcoat of paint. What we found was that whilst it would spray apply fine, we could not unfortunately obtain a satisfactory finish when attempting to apply the product by roller and tipping off / laying off with a brush to the sample panels that we tried off the boat. In fairness to the manufacturer they offered to come and spray their paint onto the underside of the hull but I had to decline their very kind offer given the issues of overspray getting everywhere and health risks of atomised 2 pack paint in such a confined space.
Fortunately Roger Bolton and John O’Donnell of International Ltd, a subsidiary of Akzo Nobel came to our rescue with their Perfection Pro range of paints that have been specially formulated and extensively tested to provide the end user with a paint system that will both apply by roller and spray as can be seen in the following video:
The Perfection Pro paint system has also been used on another jet hydroplane that you may have heard of and as featured in this news article from August 2018:
Both Roger and John were very busy with the International Boat Show held this month so we were blessed that they were able to act so quickly in arranging their product to be sent out to us and for coming on board as product sponsors of the venture. However you will have to wait until next month to see us back on with progressing this stage of the build that unfortunately managed to trip us up for a month until International Ltd very kindly managed to come to our rescue.
My only other news and apologies for not being jet hydroplane related is our eldest son Tom is running his first marathon next weekend which is the famous London one for his nominated charity of Age UK which is a very worthy cause especially as I am getting older by the day with all the stress of what should have been a straightforward paint job frustratingly losing me a month on the build.
If you would like to donate as little or as much as you wish to Tom’s chosen charity Age UK for him running the London Marathon then the following link should take you to the right webpage to do so:
Apologies for the lack of build progress this month for the reasons stated herein but we should, thanks to International Ltd, now be back on track so I better stop waffling and get back to painting Longbow at last.