Projects moving along despite the rain.
24 June 2016 | Power Boats yard, Trinidad
Bill/rain threatening all day
Here's the latest. The taping and sanding continues. It poured about 1100 and trashed a bunch of the paper and tapes that had been applied. "Lobster" is in the cockpit sanding away with his orbital sander while I removed four cleats that hole the genoa and forestay sheets. The other two men are also sanding anything that looks like it needs sanding or filling with paste. "Lobster" hope or more accurately WANTS to be done by Friday. All the painting is to be done by then, at least that's the way he wants it but Mother Nature is setting us up with an 80% chance of rain for the next five days. Rain is what screwed up the last painting of the decks and he wants to do it again.
I returned to Zephyr about 1700 last evening(Wednesday)and we started in cleaning and taping more on the deck. I covered each of the deck prisms with blue tape to protect them as the one we got cleaned and polished how has a nice set of scratches on its top and I sure don't want any paint to get on it as there is no safe way to get it off of plastic without scratching it. Tracy set about trying to close us the tarps we have with more tape and a stapler. Not sure how much good it will do but we will see. The deck got quite the drenching yesterday. Jason, our wood worker showed up late in the afternoon and told us he would be back in the morning but if "Lobster" is painting the cockpit, there is no safe way in or out of the cockpit. Nice guy, Jason. It sprinkled about 2300 last night. It is the rainy season after all but we sure could go for a couple of nice sunny days so we can get this done. We still need our new hatches and aren't quite sure when they will show up as "Lobster" hasn't taken the handles that need to be inset on them.
It's now Thursday morning and the forecast is for 80% chance of rain starting about 1030 and continuing till the middle of the afternoon. This should make painting interesting. The workmen showed up about 0845 and plan on taping and papering more in the cockpit as well as elsewhere. Painting in the cockpit shouldn't be a problem but out on the deck, unless it is done early before the rains come, could be a problem and as there is no compressor anywhere neat our boat, I'm not sure he's going to get it done before Mother Nature does. Tracy has decided to stay on board stitching and reading and I'm back in the internet room finding more shows and doing this post. If they do get the cockpit painted, I'll be unable to return till much later in the day so I also brought along my shower bag so I can at least get a nice shower during the day. With it being "Barbecue Night"here at Power Boats, I'd like to be clean for a change. Heck, I might even shave!
Update on the weather. By 1100, it was pouring enough that Moses would have had problems with the Ark staying afloat. For half an hour it poured buckets and flooded the boatyard with the drainage ditches running at maximum capacity. It was a mess but at least the dirt(mostly chewed up coral) dries quickly and the pavement is dry once the water is gone. As to my deck, well that's a different story. What was taped out on deck is saturated and the paper they used to keep the paint from spreading during the spraying is also trashed. Maybe, tomorrow but I'm not holding my breath as its an 80% chance of rain again tomorrow. All work on the deck stopped by lunch.
As for our woodworker, Jason, he is busy making a template for the hole in the ceiling. We need to dry fit the granny bars tonight so we can make sure his new panel will fit the area without running into the bolts. I bought four more bolts a half inch shorter to make sure they don't come out too far from the nuts on the ceiling. Tonight, we will see if they are long enough to get to the nuts after going through the plates on the bottom of the bars, then the filler and core and fiberglass and epoxy and then another layer of fiberglass. At the worst, I take the longer ones and cut them off with a hacksaw. Jason is having a wonderful time with our Fein Multimaster tool.