Life on the hard is wearing a bit thin; we hate living on board while working on the boat; it's tough to keep the work chaos from intruding on the home, and when you've multiple projects going, jumping from one to the next, it becomes impossible to keep work & home separate.

And one thing leads to another when fixing boats. One of our problem areas has been the four corners of the pilot house roof where chain plates are welded to the steel bulkhead and rise above/ thru the composite roof. It turns out that the weld between the stainless chain plate and mild steel bulkhead was not treated, just painted over, and of course this area has continued to breakthrough and bleed from the first year onward. In the past weeks we've sandblasted and coated, now in the middle of fairing and trying to eliminate water catchment areas behind the chain plates. And that has led to completely stripping everything screwed or bolted into the pilot house roof -- solar panels, radar, spotlight, at least 8 antenna -- hand-scraping the anti-skid from the entire roof, and now we're filling all the screw holes and will scarify and re-seal the entire roof, before new non-skid. We're re-bedding the screws & bolts for the rails at the sides and front of the roof and will seal/embed them with the coming coatings. The only item going back onto the roof will be the mount for the small radar (after some modification).

In the meantime, we've got one coat of fairing left to apply to the major problem areas we blasted at the bow and portside gunwale (before another coat of epoxy and finally a top coat); still have to install the new cutlass bearing; change out the engine mounts; get the para vane poles modified and remounted etc, etc. the interior of the pilot house is a riot of loose cables and wires (all those items we removed from the roof had power and data connections). Various antenna will be remounted, but not directly on the roof. Instead we'll use the new light brackets on the mast, as well as the roof side rails, bringing all the cables inside the cabin via new stainless gooseneck fittings which will be mounted and embedded here in the next couple days.

I can hear the clock ticking... our daughter Kate and her family will be arriving in Ketchikan on 17 May, so we've got to stay with it. This too shall pass...