Saturday and Sunday. some work and some play.
19 June 2016 | Power Boats yard, Trinidad
Bill/overcast
It's now Saturday afternoon and we've spent most of the morning out on deck inspecting our new deck. They worked on getting more paint on the non skid early yesterday afternoon and their work was rewarded by a nice rain storm within 30 minutes of the last roller full of paint going down. Oh how Mother Nature really doesn't like us! We let it dry over night and went out this morning to take off as much of the blue masking tape as we felt we could. We inspected just about every place and put "X"s in tape where we feel it needs more attention. Not a lot of them but enough. We still can't put on the granny bars as they neglected to spray paint the area around the holes for the bolts. That's going to slow us down again as we have to have them do it on Tuesday(Monday is another holiday) which means we can't put them on till Wednesday at the earliest. We've cleaned out a good bit of tools and stuff out of the cockpit but won't take the big stuff out till Monday to make sure the paint has enough time to cure. It takes four days at these temperatures.
I cut out the fiberglass batting that was covering the hole in the stern deck for the emergency tiller and fitted the cap on it but again, we can't caulk it down till everything is ready as I want to do as much as possible as far as caulking goes in one day. Doing that means I'll get the most use out of the caulking tube. Any longer between jobs and I'd have to get another tube and at over $25US per tube, I'd prefer to do it this way.
The kids are enjoying the new deck since it a lot cooler for them but Snowshoe seems to be missing the teak as he loved to go out and stretch his claws on it, scratching away just about every time he went out. Blue just enjoys being out there with us, rolling on the top of the hatches.
We are getting closer but we still have a ways to go. "Lobster" took our hatches to work on this weekend so maybe we might get them back this next week. We have all the hardware for them so when ever they come back, we should be able to install them. Two for the stern deck and two doors that cover the anchor locker opening.
It's now Sunday morning and we've started in again. This chore is painting the inside of the dorades. Over the years, the paint has slowly chipped out around the edges and it has faded quite a bit. It was time for a facelift. We got a small tin of Interlux Brightside Flag Blue. A darker shade of paint than what we had. Tracy put on the first coat and it seemed to bubble a bit so a sanding and another coat is in it's future. The facelift continues.
While she was doing that, I was out on deck enlarging the openings for the deck prisms. Once we removed them from their bedding on the teak deck and the teak was removed, we laid them back in what what left of the hole and Moses and crew added some epoxy filler around them building up a nice edge around the outside of the bracket. The bad thing is that they not only built up to the bracket, they filled in a bit on top of the brackets making getting them back out(we laid them in to keep the dust out and then put tons of blue tape over the tops)difficult. We had to slowly chip away the excess till we could get them out. The problem was that there was no space around the outside of the bracket for any caulk to push through really sealing around all the edges. My job today was to take a sander/grinder out and work my way around the edges till I had a nice channel for the caulk. We bought a battery powered Dremel tool quite a while ago and have since found it lacking in any kind of power to do just about any job. I tried it again and while it would have been perfect for the task, it again lacked the power to cut through even a small layer of the filler that surrounded the bracket. I grabbed our Fein Multimaster and stuck in a small toothed saw blade and it did the job perfectly. I taped off just outside the edges of the holes and then used the Multimaster to cut away the extra filler. It was slow work as I didn't want to screw it up. I continually used the vacuum to clear away the dust so I could see where I had and hadn't cut. It took a while but I got the first one all done. As I was finishing it up and preparing to head for the second, Mother Nature intervened and dropped a bunch of rain. I took all the tools into the cockpit and settled in and am typing this as I wait for it to stop so I can go back out and finish the job.
It's now about 1115 and after spending a bit of time putting my tools and other things that had made their way to the cockpit away, as it was still sprinkling, I gathered up the laundry and headed for the laundry room up the hill. Four washers and three dryers make it nice and easy and as there was no one ahead of me, I got right to two of the washers. Now I sit back and wait the 30 minutes it takes to do the wash and then another 45 for the dryers. It's still sprinkling but I'm nice and tucked away and hope that it lets up a bit when everything is done. I did bring an umbrella along just in case. Tracy came up and took over as I needed to have a quick lunch and hike over to Crews Inn for out Sunday afternoon Mexican Train game. Thirteen cruisers showed up so it was a good gathering, swapping stories and learning about each other. I was back at Zephyr by 1630 and in for a quiet night.