With plans to sail to the South Pacific we arrived in Panama with our bags full of boat stuff. Copa Air had a seat sale for first class that made it cheaper to fly first class and get the larger baggage allowance than pay over weight baggage fees in coach. We hauled a lot of boat stuff.
To keep the time on the hard to a minimum we did the repairs necessary below the water line by which included fiber glassing a spot on the trailing edge of the keel I hit going aground the first season we had the boat. We then sanded, taped, and painted the bottom.
The anchor chain needed the rust removed from the section used most so while still on the hard I got a lot of exercise dragging the first two hundred feet of chain through the gravel of the work yard until the rust was gone. Dawn painted it with aluminum paint then we turned it end for end and winched it back into the chain locker.
I had polished the sea water pump bore where the impeller runs and installed new bushings, shaft and seals. After installing it I filled a bucket with water for cooling and tested the engine. In four days we were in the water.
By chance we were place in the end slip of the dock furthest from the marina office which was a bit of luck as we still had some noisy dirty work to do that probably should have been done in the work yard away from the other boats.
My main project was to remove the old hard dodger and fabricate a new bigger and better one out of fiberglass. With the few skills I gained making a fridge liner with fiberglass last year and stack of supplies I preceded with my usual enthusiasm.
The construction method was stitch and fiberglass so we formed the shape we wanted with honey comb core and wood panels then stitched it together with a sail needle and nylon string.
We then mixed polyester resin and applied it to bond all surfaces that would overlap in the final design. We laid 225 gram woven glass mat where we needed finished surfaces and wetted it down with resin.
The worst part of the project was about to start. Resin had to be mixed with micro fiber to form a paste to make all the surfaces fair, like drywall a mudding project with curves. Weeks later and countless nights itching from glass fibers we were ready to cut out the window. Each day I would walk over to another dock and view my project, come back and erase old lines and draw on more until I liked the way they looked. With the jig saw as my sculpting tool I worked cautiously cutting out the final shapes. We laid the clear 3mm polycarbonate over the opening and scribed the cut lines onto it then cut it with a zip cutting blade on the angle grinder, drilled the holes and screwed it in place.
This all sounds very systematic but not included here are the days we didn’t get anything done as other things took priority; the days we lost to rain; the half day we spent in taxies in Colon explaining in Spanish we wanted to buy resin; the days of living in glass fiber and resin dust, and the time crunch. American Thanksgiving came and went, so did Christmas then New Years. More about those events later.