09/17/2006
Michael worked on the floor hatch by removing the SS lifts, sanding and filling gaps. We also got our very first coat of varnish put onto the drawer fronts, and salon seat parts. It looks great. I am looking forward to seeing it come along.
I got motivated and finally cut out my sunbrella. I cut out, which is really a misnomer to those who have never used sunbrella before. You can't use scissors on it or it will fray terribly. You have to use a heat gun and melt it. At least you don't have to worry about edges that way.
I used some of it to set my sewing machine up with the proper stitch length and tension. I am using white UV resistant thread on the forest green sunbrella. Looks pretty good.
I used the measurements from the handrails and cut the smaller ones out. I thought I would try a small one first. It turned out nice, although I used one of the interior handrails we have here to check out size. I think I may have to make them slightly wider to account for the snaps. Now, I just need snaps.
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09/16/2006
This week has been a lazy one. We have done little things, but nothing that has done much to dent the overwhelming to do list.
Today Michael completed the table seat veneer front, where the drawers go. He also got the little spots on the side that popped up, fixed.
We were cutting down the drawers when we discovered just how bad the delamination was to them. The teak front was fine and the bottom had no water damage, go figure since it had to be totally immersed. We ran to home depot to get some nice oak plywood. *3* stores later we found some. That was fun - NOT.
Michael got the drawers together fairly quickly. While he was doing those, I worked on portlight #2. Michael brought home a drill press and I could use it with the wire wheels I was using in a drill. It was much easier to be able to stand there and hold it rather than hold it and the drill at the same time. I still use the drill to get tricky spots, but the majority I do with the press. I am a powertool queen!! WOOHOO
Michael also got the salon seats ready for varnishing soon while I stripped the 2 drawer fronts and the portside salon trim.
Although the week was slow, we made good progress today.
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09/09/2006
Yup, it happened again. Michael gets great ideas during his sleep. He did it with the stringer and came up with a great way to put them together so they will be strong. Gotta love when the sub-conscious helps you out. I would love that skill.
We packed up fairly quickly and got everything loaded just as it started to rain. It tends to rain a lot around here. I am just glad it isn't snow.
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09/08/2006
I got out of the boat when I heard Bernie outside. He was loading an old car onto a trailer and I helped him put some metal to recyle into it. When there was no more for me to do there I went into the boat and finished measuring the nav station.
I tracked down the propane system. It goes from the propane locker in the lazarette to the stove, but also T'd off to somewhere else. It ended up hanging free in the engine room. I suspect it might have been connected to a water heater. We will never know. We may end up moving the propane locker as well. This one is very small and we plan on carrying 2-20lb tanks.
We worked on school work and I checked out the forward storage tank - whew it stinks. The port water fill goes nowhere under the V-berth. Yup, I can just see it now, some guy filling our water tanks and asking us if we happen to have a huge tank. Note to self - NEVER use that fill.
After lunch, Paisley and I worked on the chain locker. It was a terrible job. The chain was rusty and tangled into a big heap. Have you ever gotten a necklace into a knot. Think that, but with 100's of pounds of chain. ugh
At least it was nice after it was cleaned out. I saw a bag made for a chain someplace - maybe that will do. I labelled the 3 parts of all the portlights so they don't get mixed up when we remove them.
When Michael got back we looked over the floor. Michael got temporarily discouraged figuring out if we should remove everything from bulkhead to bulkhead or piece it together. But sometimes piecing together can take more time than ripping it all out.
I told him if it takes longer, it takes longer. I originally thought this refit would take 2 years to get her back into the water. Anything faster than that would be a bonus. Right now, Michael is trying to target the fall of next year. It would be nice to be there if we could - of course we haven't decided where to put her in yet. At least we are in the middle of the country and pretty much everything is equally far away from us.
I asked Michael if we could PLEASE do something about the port wall. There was major water damage there. My whining must have worked because we started removing layers of plywood - it took a couple of layers but we got down to stable wood quickly.
Paisley helped remove the veneer along with me. While working on that Michael took the plywood off the starboard cabintop side along with a second portlight.
We then gave up for the night and headed next door to Bernie's for a couple of hours.
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09/07/2006
Michael sanded a small section of the teak veneer this morning as we loaded the truck to go to the boat. It looked great.
Michael drove us to the boat and headed off to work. The nice thing about doing this time and time again is there is less and less for us to do when we arrive to set up for the weekend.
Since Bernie's car was parked next to the pumphouse where I string the power cords I didn't hook up power. The kids started schoolwork and during breaks I got some stuff I needed to do done.
I measured the handrails and the winches for their covers. I wanted to find out where the galley sink drain came out, it had been bugging me since I could not find the thruhull. To my surprise it drained directly into the bilge. THAT is going to have to be redone.
I discovered the rear head discharged directly overboard but the forward head has a Y-valve to discharge overboard or to go to a storage tank.
In the afternoon it started to rain but the boat stayed nice and dry with the tarp overhead, gotta love it. I watched 'The Black Hole' with the kids. They laugh at the special effects but I love the movie. It was a great time to write in my journal, later to be transcribed into this blog.
After the movie I tracked down 3 more below the waterline thruhulls. Two are transducers - one I think is a speed sensor and the other is a depth sounder. Since we have no electronics it can be anything we want anyway. I found and marked 3 more above the waterline thruhulls before Michael got home. 2 of them didn't even go anywhere so I marked them blank. All the holes in the boat are accounted for. Finally.
When Michael got home he looked at the location of the thruhulls and wiggled himself into the engine room. The 2 in the engine room didn't go anywhere and we speculated. I hope one becomes the sink drain.
Then for fun, Michael removed the fittings from the watertanks - a very oily job. To make it worse Michael hates getting his hands dirty. Go figure.
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09/06/2006
Before Michael went to work, we HAD to see if the epoxy worked. We hoped the parchment paper worked and the epoxy didn't soak through and glue the plywood to our salon seat. That would be a problem.
We removed all the weights and lifted off the paper. TADA! it worked! We carried it to the table and put it teak side down. Michael cut the excess off and we turned it over. It looked great. It had some sanding to be done, but we now had our first piece of teak plywood. It is a good day.
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09/05/2006
We epoxied for the first time tonight. We choose the long side of the salon seat to start with, since if it messed up too badly it would be hidden by the table. We figured it would work, but never hurts to do it where it won't be noticeable.
Michael and I got dressed up in our organic vapor respirators (I am your father Luke!), chemical resistant gloves and opened the garage door. We banned the kids from the garage upon threat of death and popped the can.
We had previously laid out the teak veneer dry. We used the epoxy you had to count the drops of hardner into, Michael dropped, I counted. The veneer had gone on fine, although we did have some leakage between the sheets which I tried to wipe up as best as I could. We laid parchment paper on the floor, then moved the piece on top of it. Another piece of parchment and a piece of 3/4" plywood. On top of the plywood we placed 4 cinder blocks, and since Michael stuck to his 'always be (over) prepared' motto, he put on every heavy tool he could find: clamps, ratchets, etc. We waited to see if it would work. I am sure he neighbors would be asking what we were up to.
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09/04/2006
Now that the garage is nice and clean its time to fill it up again, this time with projects for the boat. This was the day the boat work began in earnest - finally!
We started on the salon seat. I explained to Michael what I wanted when it was done. I wanted as much usuable space as possible. Easy to access with baffles to keep everything from rolling around out of control. I don't like large drawers, they are just too heavy to open when they are full. I could happily have all the large ones removed, but Michael wanted them. We compromised and I got 3 lift up hatches, rather then 1. The first and second hatches open over the split up storage compartment that used to be one large one. The third hatch lifts up over the drawer. I can access the space around it and Michael still gets his drawer, although it has been cut down.
Michael cut out the seat top sanded and painted it. While he was working on the seat I stripped and sanded the cabin trim pieces we removed from the wall. I also worked some stripper on the companionway hatches. I need to do that again. There is still some paint in the hard to reach areas. Another day.
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09/03/2006
Yup, today was a repeat of yesterday, but we got almost all of it organized and the floor has appeared. It was great, I had visions of wide expances of cement open enough for me to park a car into. Michael told me to snap out of it... sigh.
If that wasn't bad enough THEN Michael decided his work bench area wasn't organized well enough. So what does he do? He took EVERYTHING off his bench and peg board and put it into the middle of my serene garage floor. And for fun he pulls out all of the 12 totes underneath the bench and lays them open in a row. I knew it was too good to last.
He did most of the rest on his own. I was too ovewhelmed by totes and loose tools to even attempt it. But I have to admit, when he was done it looked great. He emptied about half the totes and his peg board now looks like a hardware store. It will be nice to actually find a tape measure when we need one - we have over 2 dozen!
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09/02/2006
We decided to stay here and get the garage cleaned out and create a real workspace. The last time I was able to park my car in the garage was 2 years ago. That was because I had done what I could (I needed his input on everything else), and piled all the remaining stuff on the other side of the garage. There was a big hailstorm and I was able to wiggle the car in there, although I thought I may have to stay inside the car unwanting to squish myself through the door.
Anyway, we had totes full of stuff from our trip to the pacific northwest, from Michael's Dad that we hadn't had time to sort, and the miscellaneous garage junk that seems to pile itself in the middle of the floor - oh wait, that was me.
We attacked the garage early and kept at it most of the day. We got lots of stuff moved under the house. Actually, we stacked it at the door and Paisley moved it under the house. We are old and feable afterall and she is young. We moved it into a pile of stuff to keep and another to be sold in a garage sale - a prospect for next spring. We have been lightening the load for a year or two now, I never mind getting rid of stuff - I hate junk.
By the time we went to bed, we had the big stuff (band saw, planer, etc) all organized and the floor was starting to appear as our garbage pile was starting to grow. wheee!
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