I'm in Kansas City, MO this week at the Skills USA National Championship competition to determine the best and brightest in the service industry not just for marine techs, but virtually any area of service you can think of, from airplanes to pastry chefs to medical assistants. Most people outside of the service industry are not familiar with Skills USA and I encourage you to go to their website to learn more about what they do and how it can impact your life whenever you need to get something repaired or built. Go to www.skillsusa.org to find out more about this group.

The participants come from schools all over the US and most of the competitors have already proven themselves by winning state or regional contests. So, for me this is an opportunity to not only meet with the instructors, but students that have really worked hard to become the best that they can be in their respective interest areas. As a judge for the contest I get to see these young people demonstrate their skills first hand. These are the newest and best that the marine service sector will see. These are the people you want to be servicing your boat!

One of my personal volunteer projects over the last several years has been to work with the people at Skills in the development of a new competency exam for these or any Skills USA member in the marine service technology area. One of the mandates set forth by Skills was that the exam be Standards Based. Most of you reading this probably have no real idea what that means, so let me explain. Virtually any industry has a "code" or set of standards that are followed in the workplace to act as a guiding light for work perfomed. Household electricians are mandated to follow the National Electric Code as an example. Well, since I work for the Standards writing body for the recreational marine industry, the American Boat & Yacht Council (ABYC) I was a logical choice to create a Standards Based test for the marine industry. This is a whole new approach for the marine sector, as well as many of the other service sectors represented here at this contest. The other interesting thing about this exam is that it is the first of its type within the marine industry and it utilizes some new approaches to standardized test taking.

Readers need to understand that most service people in the world have a very definable set of learning styles. Visual and hands-on learning are the keys to their successful training. To that end, this exam employs many visuals as well as interactive drag and drop diagrams. Yes, it is a multiple choice exam, but it is the first attempt at integrating some of the known learning styles and methods into a generic, industry wide competency exam. Further its all online, so the new generation of service workers are at a computer taking the exam. Computers are a way of life in the new service sector, so why not adopt them for competency testing purposes. Its also an instant gratifiaction society at this point in history, so the online system gives the students a score immediately, which is recorded in a database.

So, today was the "written" portion of the contest, and all of our marine contestants have taken the online test. Tomorrow is the hands-on portion of the contest and the contestants will work their way through 5 work stations demonstrating their skills in boat and trailer preparation, precision measurement, electrical troubleshooting and systems diagnostics. I'll get you some more photos tomorrow. Below you see our first group online working their way through the new exam. Remember folks, these young technicians are the future for your boat repairs, and with people like these working on your boat your future looks good! 

The on-going rebuild of the 1977 Silverton is continuing and this morning Gel-Coat Jim began preparing some of the nicks in the original gel coat surface for recoating. With a small grinder he removed all of the loose gel-coat around each of the nicks in the surface. Its important to remember here that a small nick will often require grinding back a significantly larger area around the preimeter of the nick. The photos below show the three areas on the boat's hull that are going to be recoated.

After grinding as shown, you need to be extremely careful not to get any wax or other contaminates onto the ground down surface. It's a good idea to wash the area with acetone to clean out the area and remove any loose grinding particles. The remaining surface is comparatively porous so if the gel coating is not going to be done immediately its also a good idea to cover the area to keep it clean.

Hopefully Jim will be applying the gel-coat tomorrow morning so we can get a look at that part of the process. I'll be checking in before I fly to Kansas City, MO in late morning.

You may be wondering why I'll be in Kansas City. Not much water out there. Well, I'll be acting as a judge at the Skills USA national championship in the Marine Service Technology area. This is a trip I make every year and the contest is really a chance to get a first hand look at the best and the brightest students from marine tech programs from around the US. The future of boat repair is competing head to head to see who comes out the winner in a challenging contest that is comprised of both written and hands-on skills related to boat repair. I'll be reporting live from the Kansas City Convention Center beginning on Wednesday.

Well I was wrong, the project non-skid / gelcoat repair project hit a speed bump yesterday and they are not ready to begin masking off the deck to begin the refinish process. The hold-up was the cockpit sole. Here it is again:

It turns out that when the original owner installed the carpeting in the cockpit, they used some adhesive that was nearly impossible to remove. The tan colored residue you see above was relatively easy to get out with liberal washing down with acetone and a lot of scrubbing. The dark grey streaks were a different compound and the acetone barely touched it. Vigorous scraping finally got it off, but the whole process took an entire afternoon. The sole now looks like this:

The glass man ran out of time yesterday and today he's coming back to sand the non-skid down to what will be its new surface in preperation for the re-coat. We'll follow-up after the weekend because it looks like they are going to need some extra time on this before any new surfaces are applied.

The fiberglass man finished prepping the 1977 Silverton yesterday so that he can now begin the process of getting ready for new non-skid surfacing on deck. He's still sanding away in the photo below:

 When all is said and done, the 36 grit did a great job here, but some interesting things did show up that were not really a surprise, and that you should understand.

In a few places all of the original gel coat did get sanded through. This is common when doing a job like this, especially at corner edges. This is because when boats are built and the gel-coat is being sprayed into the mold, the thickness of the gel-coat is often a bit thinner at corners than the flat surfaces. The dark spots in the photo below show some of the sanded through spots. Also, what you see as some light brown areas are just some of the left over non-skid material. It's been sanded thoroughly, so a new coating will adhere right over this new surface.

These thin spots that are now showing glass through will disappear as long as the thickness of the new coating is adequate.

Today, the detail of proper masking off should follow. We'll get a look at that tomorrow.

Over the next few days I'm going to be following the complete replacement of the non-skid surface and gel-coat dings on a 1977 Silverton sportfish that a friend of mine is restoring. Some photos of the boat as it stands right now are here:

You can see from the above two photos that the non-skid surface has worn right through in some spots and is all worn and irreparably dirty.

In the cockpit shown below, you can see the remains of the glue that was used to hold a carpet that was added by the original owner to the cockpit sole. All that is going to be removed and the cockpit will end up with a newly coated surface.

The process begins with a combination of hand and power sanding the old usrfaces to remove all of the old non-skid and glue. Here we see the glass man removing the old non-skid from the forward deck.

The trick here is to sand down to the surface of the original gel-coat and no further, without making any gouges that bring things down to the raw fiberglass surface. What grit sandpaper to use? 36 grit will do nicely here but it does depend on the courseness of the non-skid surface to begin with. This is followed up with hand sanding with 80 grit to get to the original surface.

I'll follow up tomorrow after I get to inspect the prep-work being done today. This should be an interesting project. So stay tuned.