Alajuela 48 and Lessons Learned in Bottom Job

[john briggs]

Hi Folks

I thought I would share a major lesson learned recently. I have just completed a full refit of Julie Ann, my Alajuela 48. All new standing and running rigging, sails, electronics all up to n2k, genset, hydrovane, big three blade feathering prop and I finally went for the full bottom job.

In December of 09 I had the bottom peeled, and with a few friends I went back with 3 layers 10 oz fiberglass and vinylester resin. Being loath to pay anyone to do work on my boat I read every article I could find on the subject. Most boatyards just peel you and then go back with resin. I decided that I wanted to replace the removed glass, plus I liked the idea that the glass would give some more substance for the vinylester resin and the ultimate blister protection. During this effort I removed and glassed over three thru hulls and relocated one.

I went through 25 gallons of vinylester resin in the process, and while the last coat was still in its "chemical window" where it is not tacky, but will show a fingerprint I laid on my bottom paint. I did everything I could to minimize costs and even on my rather large boat, I kept my costs down to less than 7k, including the peel and the boat yard costs. There was a lot of sweat equity in the job and a few days of help from friends. You have to have very good friends and lots of 3M scrub pads in your shower. Hanging glass upside down is not easy.

I was absolutely thrilled to get the job done. (Having seen how superficial blisters are, I am not sure I would embark on this job unless the bottom were really bad. Julie Ann could probably have gone for another 5 years or so without the effort) The boat looked great. In May 2010 we took a couple of boats over to the bahamas for two weeks. On arrival after an 18 hour sail, we dove in the water and were generally celebrating when I noticed the bottom of the boat was no longer black!! Every square inch of bottom paint was gone! The fiberglass was fine, but the bottom paint had disappeared.

I quickly learned on return home that you NEVER put bottom paint over vinylester resin. You always put on a primer coat of epoxy.

Well I just finished the haul job to fix that problem. Fortunately I didn't have much prep work to get the hull ready for epoxy (interprotect 2000). I laid on two coats of epoxy and 3 coats of bottom paint and she is back in the water. Hopefully I won't need to haul for a couple of years. The bottom looked free from blisters however!

There is very little to no information available about these boats. I am not sure what is truth and what is fiction, but from what I can determine there were only two factory finish A48's, and the second was out in san diego but is now on a circumnavigation. There were apparently a number of hulls sold, and I have no idea about those. The boats were built to some kind of special Lloyds quality program, and are designed to be extremely stout and fast, with one reference claiming they can run in a 60 knot wind (sounds like advertising spin to me). One look at the keel and rudder and you know she is fast however. Julie Ann can easily outpace my friends Shannon 50.

While the boat was in the travelift I asked the guys how much she weighed expecting to hear 32 to 34,000 lbs........ 45,0000 lbs. I was shocked. I wish I could get more information. I contacted Ray Richards and asked him for details, however he never got around to sending me anything. If there is anyone that can help....?

Also I would love to get in touch with any other A48 owners.

Sorry for the lengthy post. If anyone has any questions about doing bottom jobs or anything, don't hesitate to ask.

Best Regards
John Briggs

[Dennis Wilcoxon]

Hi John,

What a job! I can't even imagine the grinding, sanding, fairing and resin drippings. Wow! Satisfaction is a job well done. 

I sand blasted off the gelcoat on Maya our first year and barrier coated. Like you, I chemically bonded the first coat of bottom paint and it seems to have stuck tenaciously. Maya had a few large and deep laminate blisters which I ground out and laid up with mat and epoxy. Because I did not fully dry the hull, I have an occasional blister or two the grind and fill each haul out. Every year they are fewer and smaller so I'm either gradually replacing the entire hull with repairs or the barrier coat is working. I now need to reduce the thickness of my bottom paint layers and I've often wondered what would happen if one just sanded off a layer or two and relaunched with a fresh surface. I use Trinidad red hard paint. 

I installed a Max prop myself last spring. Since I had such good luck with the paint of epoxy adhesion on the hull, I thought I'd try the same thing with the prop. I sandblasted the housing and blades to give a little tooth to the surface and epoxied the parts followed by trinidad.  Well... by the time I had motored the 2 miles to  home, all the paint and epoxy were gone. Now I admit that my prospective repair to this was nothing on the order of yours but I was miffed. I dove on it and removed it ashore and sprayed it with petitt's zinc barnacle coat. That seems to work real well. It's been 9 mos with no hard growth, though the water's been cold.

I think I'll single hand Maya down to Isla Mujeres again this spring. Maybe the end of April. Any one want to go?

Cheers,

Dennis

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[John Briggs]

Vic

Thanks for your kind words. We are headed to the exumas this may. 

Regards

John Briggs

On Mar 22, 2013, at 12:06 PM, Viv Wright <vrdw...@gmail.com> wrote:

John:

Glad to see that Julie Ann went to a good home. I often wondered where it ended up as I was actually one of the bidders through Gil in Luperon.   The Alajuela 48 represents the best of ocean going sailboats that is hard to find these days (I'm still looking!). 

All the best

Viv

UK  

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[Cherokee Rose]

We have an Alajuela 48, “Cherokee Rose” hull number 1.  Upon purchasing the boat We had palm sized blisters on all the underwater surfaces, except the rudder.  We had our bottom done by a company called Hull-Tech in San Diego. He had a custom peeler he’d built (and was trying to sell the patent for) The machine cut through all the bottom paint, gel coat and the first layer or two of fiberglass. Literary to the bottom of the blisters. The peel depth was about 3/16 of an inch. Then they washed the exposed glass with fresh water a couple of times and let it bake in the southern California sun for a week. Building it back up, they used one layer of 1708 fiberglass fabric (heavy matte and cloth stitched together) soaked with vinyl-ester resin. Then faired the hull with a vinyl-ester micro-balloon filler. They did top the repair with blister barrier bottom coat and, the Proline bottom paint they used gave us two years and 10,000 miles.  To have our bottom professionally done with a lifetime warranty cost $18,000. (the vessel’s sale price came down to allow for these and lots of other repairs) I hate writing checks that big but while Hull-Tech was working, I was allowed to work on the boat. I cut out and replaced the rudder stock with a new one, had a new bronze rudder gudgeon cast (and bearing), bead blasted all the sea-cocks and replaced the thru hulls (also glassed over 2 unused thru-hulls)  rerouted the main engine exhaust (its 18 feet shorter now!) replaced the propeller cutlass bearing, had the propeller shaft machined shorter by 4 inches, serviced the max prop, and painted a green boot stripe. We would love to trade advice and stories of other Alajuela 48s.( Raymond Richards believes there were 4 hulls laid up in Huntington Beach Ca. then the 48 mold was sent to Taiwan and 1 more hull was built by the “chapman-may” company)  “Cherokee Rose” is currently in the middle of a South Pacific cruise, but would also like to find more Alajuela 48s and their owners.  Please feel free to contact us at cherokeero...@gmail.com

[Janice Hurlburt]

[Janice Hurlburt]

Hello, 

I am not sure where to begin, but we purchased an Alajula 48 in Marina Del Ray; I think it was in 1989. At the time the boat's name was Cherokee Rose and I understood

it was Hull No. 2, Not Hull No. 1 The first hull was owned by a governor in Georgia, I have to go back in my journal, the couple we bought the boat from were in Real Estate and

had dreams of sailing but it just didn't work out for them. We were the 2nd owner of Cherokee Rose. I believe the 3rd owner was bought by a Captain MIcheal. Is this you? https://anitasail.wordpress.com/about/

Cherokee Rose was built at Chapman Marine in Costa Mesa. Before I go into more detail and history, I like to make sure this email contacts you. 

We had rechristened Cherokee Rose to "Lachesa" and the port was Long Beach, CA. 

I look forward to hearing from you. 

Janice Hurlburt. 

On Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 11:55:51 PM UTC-7 Cherokee Rose wrote:

[Maurisa Descheemaeker]

Hello Janice, 

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to learn more about other Alajuela 48's out there.  We bought an Alauela 48, Whirlwind, in 2021 in Guaymas, Mexico.  We know we are the third owners and were told by the previous owners that this boat was built in Taiwan.  There are so few Alajuela 48's we have found only dead ends in our searches to learn more.  I would love to learn more about the history of tAlajuela 48's, others that are out there, and where?

So your email brings me great excitement, if a little confusion.  Have you had Cherokee Rose since 1989?  What about the Cherokee Rose that crossed the Pacific?  Was that you or another one?  We have just crossed the Pacific in Whirlwind and she has proven herself as a fantastic ocean voyager.  We are currently in the Marquesas.  

Sincerely,

Maurisa

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[Janice Hurlburt]

Hello Maurisa, 

It's wonderful to hear from you! Congratulations on owning an Alajuela 48! I have so many fond memories of our own experiences with s/v Lachesa (1991-2013) (s/v Cherokee Rose 2013-?), and I could write a book about it all.

We started our search for a cruising sailboat in 1988 and, after two years of looking, we went back to the first boat we saw: the Cherokee Rose in Marina Del Ray. Tom and Donna Hamilton, the original owners of Hull No. 2, told us fascinating stories about their boat, including one about the first Alajuela being owned by the Governor of Georgia (or at least that's how the story goes).

Tom and Donna met the owners of Hull No. 1, sailed with the Governor, and decided to commission their own boat. They owned Cherokee Rose until we purchased her in April 1991. After paperwork and transfer of ownership, we sailed her from Marina Del Ray to Newport Beach, where she was docked by the Cannery Seafood Restaurant and the Newport Sailing Club. We rechristened her "Lachesa" during a formal party with close to 100 family and friends, including previous owners Tom and Donna Hamilton. 

A few years later, we sailed Lachesa to Point Loma, CA, and moved aboard full-time in 1993. Then, in 1995, we set sail with our dream to sail around the world. I stayed in touch with Tom and Donna until we left San Diego. They had quite a story about Hull No. 2, including moving it to another location to finish building it after the original boatyard filed for bankruptcy. I even had a photo album and blueprint drawings of the entire process.

Tom’s story about rescuing the boat from the boatyard, managing to get it out just before they locked it down, was intense and unforgettable. 

A few years later, we moved s/v Lachesa to Point Loma, CA, and in 1995, we set sail for our sailing adventure. We didn't make it around the world as planned, but we did explore the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, Central America, Costa Rica, and Panama. We lived on board full-time for seven years. We ended up staying in Costa Rica for almost three years before returning home to San Diego in 2001.

Unfortunately, our dream of going back out didn't happen. Our jobs took us to the San Francisco area for a few years and then back to Chula Vista. Richard sold s/v Lachesa in 2013, and I believe it was to Michael Morey. They renamed her back to Cherokee Rose. They wrote a blog while sailing Cherokee Rose and, if I recall correctly, ended up in Australia and sold her there. Last I heard, Cherokee Rose Hull No. 2 is still in Australia.

Talk about a small world—in 2011, I was working for a company that wanted to build a 20' wide pontoon airline dive boat for people to able to do hooka diving with 60' long airlines. It was going to be based in Roatan, Honduras.

 
Guess who the owner contacted to design the boat? Raymond Richards! I was blown away and told the owner that our boat was designed by Raymond Richards too.

I hope this snippet of our shared history brings a smile to your face. Best of luck with your own sailing adventures!

   
Are you planning to log your journey in a blog? It is a great way to keep a memory log of your experience. 

Janice

Janice Hurlburt Online Management Online Visibility Strategist and Web Designer 760-898-4060, leave a msg. | https://www.janicehurlburt.com/working-together/   Book a Consult Call. Click Here!

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[Maurisa Descheemaeker]

WOW, thanks Janice.  Incredible.  According to a small notebook that came with Whirlwind, Raymond Richards designed three layouts for the Alajuela 48: a ketch with a center cockpit, called, "The Californian" (which Whirlwind is), a ketch with an aft cockpit, called "The Atlantic with two different interior layouts.  What design was your vessel?  I am curious what was actually built?  

I do keep a blog but I have been terribly remiss to keep up on it since we bought Whirlwind truth be told.  In fact it is still under the name of our previous boat, Arrow.  It is sailonarrow.wordpress.com if you want to check it out.  

It would be so amazing to see another alajuela 48 in person.  We are closer to Australia now than we ever have been so maybe we will see your old Cherokee Rose.  

Any news you have on any of the other hulls?  Sounds like perhaps there were 5?  We do not know what hull number ours is, only that Whirlwind was built in Taiwan (maybe Tashing Shipyard?) and brought to California in 1985 for a boatshow...maybe in Newport?.  Perhaps, as you wrote, Whirlwind was the only one built in Taiwan.  I don't know.  For whatever reason we have always thought that there were somewhere between 4 and 7 built but have not been able to confirm this. Sounds like we now know of 2: Cherokee Rose and Whirlwind.  

I remain ever curious about other Alajuela 48's.  

Thanks to any and all that can share what they know about Alajuela 48's.

Sincerely,

Maurisa

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[Janice Hurlburt]

Good Morning Maurisa, 

Oh boy, talk about going down memory lane; Lachesa was a big part of my life. 
We bought Cherokee Rose, rechristened her Lachesa when I was 35, and sold her 22 years later. 

I found my old files. I was wrong to state that our boat was Hull No. 2. It is actually Hull No. 3! Please see attached listing for Cherokee Rose by the original

owners. 

The last Alajuela 48, Hull No. 3, was built in the USA, which means that three boats were built in Huntington Beach, CA. 

Our boat was the "Atlantic Model, an aft cockpit with a lido deck area, ketch rigged, and two staterooms mid-ship. I have some pictures

I can share it in another email if you like to see them. 

I believe it was your boat featured at the Long Beach Boat Show; see attached article. 

I have attached more wonderful reading material on the Alajuela 48.

I read your blog! You're an excellent writer! Sorry about you meeting Mr. Papagayo; they can be a handful. We lived in the very bay (Culebra Bay)
on s/v Lachesa in the late 90's and had our run-in with those winds.    

Ciao for now!

Janice

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[Greg Campbell]

Hello John,

I have an Alajuela 33 (Mico) and had a similar surprise to you regarding weight in the slings.  A few months ago, as I was being relaunched after antifouling etc I asked the travel lift operator if he had scales.  I had unloaded a fair bit of cruising gear and since the design displacement is around 6,200kg, I was expecting about 7 tonnes, allowing for water absorption into the hull over the years.  I was shocked to be told 9,000kg.  The operator did say though, the weight of the slings, pulleys and cables on his travel lift was not netted off the shown weight and his scales were not routinely calibrated.  I guess also, the designed displacement is pretty quickly exceeded once cruising gear starts coming aboard.

Good luck with your future adventures aboard Julie Ann.

Cheers

Greg Campbell