(updated w/ pics 4/27)
Let's see, it's been days and days... we're back in our slip at Palm Harbor with all the nice neighbors (yay!), and we've sanded and cleaned and coated all of the exposed wood with Cetol Natural Teak (all of the finished wood is collectively called "brightwork," but sanding and cleaning and coating it makes one FEEL less than bright, especially in the balmy weather when everyone else is sailing or doing fun things on their own boats!). Grant is taking the lead on cetol maintenance of the brightwork. His wad of blue tape has grown yet again, with the stripping-off of the brightwork tape today. Here he is working on the forward starboard rubrail:


But something even more interesting has been happening belowdecks.

Derek has completed the refrigerator up to the hinged lid, as of today -- wow! He still has to insulate the lid and install a gasket to seal it, and do his final fiberglassing and fairing of the lid, and he will be doing that tomorrow and the next day. Over the last week, after his building of the fore and aft bulkheads to surround the fridge and hold the insulation,


he built the inner box of the fridge, fiberglassed it for stiffness, used a combination of sheet (R=3 per layer) foam and pourable foam to insulate below and on the sides of it, then fiberglassed overall and faired the finished product until it was pretty smooth!


Today Derek sanded down the faired surfaces and built the hinged lid out of the top that he'd cut on our last day in the shipyard. Note that the small side pieces are not attached yet in this picture, as they still need to be insulated -- and the right-side one will house the thermostat and display.


As he was sanding, I was over in Grant's cabin working on the hull liner some more (man, it's hot doing that stuff), using my famous ether-resistant "VOC" mask, and after one piece was in, I heard a little cough. I stuck my head out of Grant's door -- OMG!!! Clouds of gray-white stuff were billowing out of the compartment in which Derek was sanding. I yelled to Derek to stop and put a mask on, but he didn't hear me, so I went over there. His back was to me, and he was covered with white, he looked like a beignet that had just been shaken in the powdered-sugar bag. I yelled at him again from two feet away, but he still couldn't hear me, so I tapped his back and he about sanded his face off, jumping. Well, what could I do? I made him put the mask on, and he went back to sanding, but he did admit later that he should have put it on sooner...

We came to work today and found one side of our Zodiac inflatable dinghy deflated; that was kind of awful. We'd located the leak (a tiny hole in the upper outer starboard side), and were patching it when one of our neighbors came by and mentioned that "the old guy who fishes over there" (indicating the condo dock opposite the marina) had cast too far and hooked our dinghy. Well, that explains it. Apparently, the hook had gotten stuck, and Larry had sent Ken over to unhook it from the boat, but the leak had been so gradual that Ken wasn't sure it was actually all the way through when he left for work this morning. He was sure when he got back, however, since the dinghy was up on the dock and the tube was deflated waiting for the patch we'd applied to cure, so he called me to tell me what had happened and that Larry will pay for it if it turns out to need professional attention. I'm just hoping the patch will hold (we were following directions but the first attempt had a hernia so we had to deflate her to try again), and I guess I'm a little sad that we had this wonderful Zodiac dinghy with no patches and no leaks, and now we don't. UPDATE: a week later and the patch is holding! Woo hoo!

One more coat of cetol tomorrow morning on the bow rubrail, and on the two spots on the port rubrail that I had to miss when there were fenders hung at those locations, then we'll be done with rails...


but Derek and I noticed that the cockpit table needs refinishing too! That's the trouble when you "make a clean spot," you wind up having to wash the whole car. Derek was stepping into the cockpit a couple of days ago and the edge of the step gave way, so he epoxied the edge back on and fiberglassed the back for extra strength, then sanded down the top of the step and I put three coats of cetol on it -- looks pretty good. But it's right next to that cockpit table, so it's even more of a reminder that the table will need sanding down tomorrow :-)

Grant and Blake (from Monomoy) have been scooping up minnows with their small nets, and Blake even found two tiny crabs. Had to keep them in a separate container from the minnows; I thought crabs preferred dead stuff (like dead and smelly in particular), but apparently they are willing to to kill minnows and -- I guess -- wait for the remains to "get ripe." Learn something new daily. Remind me not to fall asleep on any lonely beaches!