Isola Naida

Tag: On The Hard

  • Shore Life: A Refreshing New Look

    Shore Life: A Refreshing New Look

    We’ve been progressing the work on Isola Naida as spring continues. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to be consistent in executing any single project from start to finish on account of the Nova Scotia spring. We take advantage of the sunny days when we have them to progress work on Isola Naida’s new look. When the rain comes, which is often, we retreat back inside to work on mechanical systems and to find all of the leaks that we need to address when the sunny days return.

    In our last post we made a list of the jobs we need to complete before Isola Naida splashes in a few weeks. This week, we’re looking at the progress made giving Isola Naida’s hull a fresh look as we head into the season.

    Bottom Paint

    A few weeks ago, D’Arcy used painter’s tape to mask Isola Naida’s boot stripe then donned a paint suit, face mask, and gloves. Equipped with his trusty DeWalt random orbital sander and just enough 120 grit sandpaper to get through the job, he gave gave the bottom paint a thorough sanding. Isola Naida’s bottom paint was not in bad condition, though the underside of the keel lacked paint coverage. After smoothing out any uneven surfaces and giving the existing paint a consistent tooth, D’Arcy thoroughly mixed two gallons of Petit HRT Unepoxy – Black.

    A full coat of fresh bottom paint was applied to the hull. High-friction areas received a second coating: the waterline, the bow, and the rudder. When we’re lifted from the stands in a few weeks, the areas that were missed will get a coat of paint before we touch the water.

    Removing Old Vinyls

    Isola Naida’s vinyl decals were aging and beginning to chip away. The large blue serif lettering was dated and bulky. We wanted to breathe some new life into Isola Naida’s appearance. When we purchased Isola Naida in July 2025, we changed her port of registry from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Halifax, Nova Scotia. We were going to have to remove some of the decals and decided this would be a good time to replace them all.

    It took a few days of work dodging the rainy weather, but we eventually had all of the old vinyl removed. The adhesive was persistent, but nothing that acetone and a microfiber cloth couldn’t handle with a little bit of elbow grease.

    New Vinyls

    We used PhotoPea to mock up various font faces before finally settling on a font called Lemonmilk. On 16 May, Noelle made her way across Halifax to HFXVinyl. Despite the limited colour selection we had decided that we were going to choose from the Oracal 751C line of vinyl. We had originally had our hearts set on choosing a grey vinyl but the Oracal 751C grey was too light a shade for the white of the hull. We settled on glossy black instead.

    On 17 May, D’Arcy set up the Cricut on the kitchen island of our apartment and laid out the required cuts before weeding the vinyl and adhering them to the transfer tape.

    Adhering the new vinyls took a lot of patience marking out lines with masking tape, stepping back dozens of times to make sure that the lines appeared straight, despite the complicated compound curves of the hull. Before the vinyls were permanently affixed to the hull the area was cleaned, polished, polished again, and wiped down with acetone to ensure the best possible adhesion. Afterward, the polished area was waxed to protect the sheen and the vinyls while we continued polishing the rest of the hull.

    Near Mirror Finish

    Starting 17 May, D’Arcy began the process of polishing Isola Naida’s hull. We’re not sure when the hull was last polished, but it didn’t take much to get the gel coat gleaming again. Before polishing, the hull was washed with Meguiar’s Boat Wash and rinsed with fresh water. Any staining was treated with CRC’s On & Off.

    We used 3M Perfect-It EX AC Rubbing Compound and a lambswool polishing pad to polish the hull. Isola Naida has a painted cove stripe and boot stripe, so we had to be careful not to polish over the paint with the lambs wool pad. We were able to skip over the cove stripe easily enough. For the boot stripe we needed to mask off the paint, polish to the tape, then pull off the tape and hand buff the boot stripe. We followed polishing the hull with a coat of Meguiar’s Flagship Premium Marine Wax to protect the finish. We’ll re-apply more wax part-way through the season to continue protecting the hull from the elements.

    What’s Next?

    With the hull work complete we can turn our focus topside and inside. Before we splash we’ll need to give Isola Naida’s standing rigging a thorough inspection as well as finish rigging the main and mizzen sails. We have some mechanical work to do such as installing the new impeller for our engine’s water pump, inspecting hose clamps, re-packing the stuffing box, and completing our survey of seacocks and through-hulls.

    Work won’t stop when we splash either. There’s an extensive list of deck hardware that requires re-seating to eliminate slow leaks and some aesthetic work to complete over the course of the summer.

    Follow along with our progress here! You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook.

  • Shore Life: Spring Maintenance & Preparing Isola Naida for the New Season

    Shore Life: Spring Maintenance & Preparing Isola Naida for the New Season

    We’re back!
    After a long winter hiatus, we’ve finally returned to the shipyard and to Isola Naida to begin our spring maintenance. Like many boat projects, progress over the winter was… aspirational at best. Work schedules, weather, and life in general got in the way, so most of our “boat time” went into planning instead of executing.

    That planning time wasn’t wasted. It made us more eager to get back aboard Isola Naida and start bringing those ideas to life. Now, with spring finally here, the real work begins.

    Winter Break: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

    Our last update was at the end of October. Before stepping away, we tackled a few key jobs. We cleaned the hull, removed the sails, and created a plan to protect Isola Naida through the winter.

    Unfortunately, our winter cover didn’t live up to expectations.

    Within a few weeks, we realized the setup wouldn’t hold up to the elements. It worked temporarily, but we couldn’t rely on it long term. We’ll treat that as a lesson learned.

    This year, we’re building a proper winter cover. We’ll document that process in a future post.

    Spring Plans: Spring Maintenance & Refit Checklist

    Instead of tackling projects at random, we’ve divided the work into two groups. Some tasks need to be completed before launch, while others can wait until we’re back in the water.

    Before Splashing

    Before we launch Isola Naida, we have a long list of jobs that require us to stay ashore or are much easier to complete on land.

    Hull Work

    This season is all about giving Isola Naida a refreshed look below and above the waterline. That means prepping and painting the bottom, removing the old vinyl decals, and bringing the hull back to life with a full polish and wax.

    We’ll be cutting and applying a new set of decals before the hull is waxed. We’re still narrowing down our preferred look, but we have a few weeks left to make that decision.

    Water Systems

    Above all else, we want to make sure the essentials are solid.

    We’ll be inspecting and cleaning all three water tanks, and refinishing them where needed. Isola Naida has a massive amount of water storage onboard and we want to ensure that it is accessible when required, and safe to consume, and that starts with clean tanks.

    Motor & Drive System

    While we prefer to be under sail, the reality is that nobody wants to be caught out without a reliable motor. Our Yanmar 4JH4E is one of the most reliable motors out there and we want to do everything we can to keep it that way.

    We’ll be getting the motor ready for the season, checking the packing, and replacing anything that looks questionable. It’s much easier to deal with these things at the dock than out at sea.

    After Splashing

    A few of our projects this year can don’t need to be completed before we’re in the water. In fact, some of these projects may take most of the year to actually accomplish, but that’s okay because we get to make our own timeline with these projects!

    Fuel Systems

    The Reliance 44’s primary fuel tank is integrated into the fiberglass structure of the keel. Isola Naida’s keel tank has a history of water contamination which her previous owners were unable to mitigate successfully. As such, her keel tank has gone unused for some time.

    We intend to flush and isolate the keel tank before refilling it with biodegradable antifreeze to provide the intended ballast and to provide colour indicator incase we find that the tank is compromised.

    We’ll also be replacing the fuel pump which feeds the liquid pre-heater in order to provide on-demand heat throughout the boat.

    Topsides

    We’ll be sanding and refinishing the toe rails, hatches, and cockpit brightwork, followed by multiple coats of varnish to bring everything back to life. There’s nothing quite like freshly varnished wood to make a boat feel cared for again.

    We’re also planning to pattern and sew custom hatch covers to help deflect rain weather and protect the brightwork of the hatches over time – and don’t worry, we won’t be completely preventing air flow with these covers, we’ll share more about the design of these covers in a future post.

    Salon

    Inside Isola Naida, our focus is on making the space more comfortable, functional, and bright.

    Not only is a deep-clean in order, we’ll also be progressing storage improvements and refreshing the look and feel of the interior by making all new salon cushions using a light-coloured, durable canvas material to really help brighten the space.

    Looking Ahead

    There’s no shortage of work ahead of us this season. Some of it is routine, some of it is long overdue, and some of it will almost certainly take more time and effort than we expect. That’s all just part of the adventure.

    We’ve already started making progress on a few of these projects, and we’ll be sharing those updates in upcoming posts as we go. There’s something satisfying about finally moving from planning into executing, and it feels good to be back aboard again.

    This will be our first full season with Isola Naida, and we’re looking forward to making the most of it!

    If you’d like to follow along in real time, you can find us on Instagram and Facebook, where we share more frequent updates from the yard and beyond. And if you haven’t already, consider joining our growing community! We’re glad to have you along for the journey.

  • Hauling-Out, Beginning Boatwork and a Surprising Message

    Hauling-Out, Beginning Boatwork and a Surprising Message

    Every haul-out marks a turning point in the sailing season, and this year was no exception for Isola Naida. After a busy summer on the water, we brought her to East River Shipyard to be hauled out, onto the hard for winter. What followed was a week of planning boat projects, uncovering the source of our tender’s persistent leaks, and receiving a message that connected us to Isola Naida’s very first owner—an unexpected reminder of the stories carried within her hull.

    Hauling Out

    With Isola Naida tied up at East River Shipyard, it took a few days of planning before she was ready to haul out. The first job was dropping her furler headsails. D’Arcy managed to remove both on his own. The staysail came down easily in a light breeze, but the genoa required a completely calm day. By Friday afternoon, 19 September, we were finally on the schedule for haul-out.

    D’Arcy, Matt, and another shipyard crew member, Chris, worked together to get Isola Naida off the dock and into the travel lift well. The winds had picked up out of the north-northwest, pushing us back against the dock. The cockpit curtains acted like sails, making it even harder to maneuver under power. With some careful fending-off, we managed to push her back, reverse into the wind, then power forward into the larger of the two wells. Because of our forestay furler, the yard opted to use the bigger lift to avoid clearance issues.

    We decided to secure on the windward side of the well. It was trickier, since the wind was blowing directly across the entrance, but this way we could tie her securely to the wharf and center her under the lift without staying aboard, otherwise we’d be pulling all 29,000 pounds of her off the leeward wall.

    With the straps carefully positioned and secured around her full keel, Isola Naida was slowly raised out of the ocean. Her bottom was in good shape, with growth mostly clustered around the rudder and keel. We didn’t have time to pressure wash her right away, so that will be a job for later while she rests in her stands.

    From there, the travel lift rolled her ashore, where she was transferred onto a large trailer for the slow, steady climb up the hill to the storage yard. Once in position, we worked with the yard crew to set her keel blocks, place her stands, and secure her for the winter.

    With Isola Naida finally on the hard, we can turn our focus to winter refit plans and the long list of boat projects waiting to be tackled.

    Tender Care

    One of the first projects is our RHIB tender. Two of her three sponsons have slow leaks, meaning we’ve had to reinflate her every single time we head out. Step one was removing the custom navy-blue cover made by the previous owners. While it offered good sun protection, it was showing its age and won’t be salvageable.

    With the cover off, D’Arcy inspected all of the seams and joints along the PVC tubes. The material is weathered, but in decent shape – no major tears, just a few abrasions to reinforce, plus an oarlock that needs to be reattached. To hunt for leaks, we mixed dish soap and water in a spray bottle and coated the tender. Surprisingly, none of the seams or abrasions were leaking. Instead, we discovered a fine slice in the starboard bow tube, plus several pinhole punctures along the bow and starboard side. The culprit? Almost certainly Isola Naida’s boarding ladder.

    Now that we’ve located the leaks, we’ll be ordering PVC fabric to patch the problem areas. We also plan to reinforce a few stress points to prevent future punctures. More on that process will be coming in a future post.

    A Surprising Message

    This past week, we received a message through Instagram that stopped us in our tracks. The sender’s last name was immediately familiar: Hochwald. It turned out to be Mike Hochwald, son of Ulrich Hochwald. Ulrich was the very first owner of Isola Naida, and the man who built her from a bare hull.

    Mike shared pieces of her early history with us. Ulrich ordered the hull from Reliance Sailing Craft Co., Ltd. in Montreal in 1975 while the family was living in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In 1976, once completed, the hull was shipped to their home in Manuels, Conception Bay South, Newfoundland. Her diesel engine, purchased from one of the local Indigenous bands near Thunder Bay, was loaded into the back of their Chevy van for the move east.

    For the next eight and a half years, Ulrich worked on Isola Naida in the backyard of the family home. Mike even recalled the winter of 1983, when an ice storm knocked out power. That night, dinner was cooked on Isola Naida’s diesel stove, lit by the glow of kerosene lamps.

    Mike has kindly offered to share more of her history with us, which we’re eager to learn. Since we’ve been planning a passage to Newfoundland as part of our steps to crossing the Atlantic, the thought of meeting Ulrich in person someday makes this story even more special.

    An Invigorating Week

    From hauling out and tackling boat projects, to uncovering a piece of our Isola Naida’s past, this week has been full of reminders of how much story Isola Naida carries with her.
    Have you ever dsicovered a surprising piece of history of something you owned? A boat, a house, or something else? Tell us about it in the comments below!

    If you’re curious to follow along with our winter refit and Isola Naida’s unfolding story, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss what’s next. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube for more!