Getting Back in Cruising Mode
05 May 2015 | Bayland Marina, Baytown, TX
Jill
It's been an unusually rainy spring here. Bud and I were getting worried that we wouldn't get enough of a break before hot weather set in to get the final two coats of varnish on the toe rail. We put off a trip to the boat two weeks ago because of rain in the forecast every day. We got the break we needed starting a week ago. We traveled to Baytown on Tuesday with the last of the showers. Wednesday was nice but with wind too strong and from the northwest (blows dirt on the boat). The wind was dying down Thursday and was supposed to clock around to the southeast so we prepped the boat for varnishing. That is actually the hardest part of the job. We had to tape the hull and topsides below the toe rail and tape every piece of hardware that touches the part to be varnished. Taping took at least four hours with both of us working. We started fairly early in the morning and didn't finish sanding until after 3 in the afternoon.
The weather was perfect and we were able to varnish on Friday and again on Sunday, finishing each day in the late morning before it got so hot that the varnish would dry faster than you could get it on. It's great to have that done, but it was tiring. I worked the inside of the rail, so all my time was spent kneeling or lying on my side on the deck to see the under curve of the rail. Ugh!
We also got some other jobs done. I made a pattern to make chaps for our new dinghy. Chaps are a protective cover that fits over the tubes and stays on the dinghy when you use it. The day I laid the vinyl out and cut and traced the pattern, the weather also cooperated, as there was almost no wind. That was a hot and tiring job, too, as I was going from the cabin where I was cutting pieces of vinyl to the dock where I was taping them to the dinghy and tracing the edges and cutouts for handholds, oarlocks, etc.
On Monday Bud winched me up in the boatswain's chair to replace the rubber boots that keep the ends of our spreaders from tearing our sails. The plan was to just redo the rigging tape. In the picture I'm retaping the top spreader on the port side where I managed to knock the boot off. It was torn and partly rotten from the sun, so Bud lowered me and Matey and I went to West Marine and bought their last two sets of large spreader boots. Back up I went and now untaped and
replaced all four of the boots.
It wasn't all work. We got to do some bird watching, we drove to Galveston and talked to the folks at a boatyard where we're going to have some work done in July and August and we made some new friends.
Maybe it was talking to them about their plans to go to the Bahamas starting in September (we hope to be following them in October), maybe it was the successful completion of the varnish job, but I'm getting more excited about getting back aboard and resuming our sailing life.