Wilbur, you're a riot...

"Wilbur Hubbard" wrote in message
news.com...

Wasn't it sometime in October that Skippy got hauled to do a simple bottom
job?

LOL! That means it's close to a year and he's STILL on the hard. Good
Grief!

The last couple of times you've brought it up you've only been off by a
factor of a half or so. Now you're up to doubling.

We have, admittedly, been here much longer than expected. As has proven to
be the case in our lives, more often than not, that's been a blessing.

My dad has entered hospice, a very good thing. Likely he'll make his last
landing (he was a pilot) in the next couple of months. It's a great deal
easier to be involved in family gatherings from S. FL than the Bahamas or
points east and south.

Lydia's Mom may or may not come with us when we leave, originally expected
in June. In the meantime, the ubiquitous afternoon rains have allowed us a
large number of trips up the street to connect to her. If she DOESN'T come
with us, which is a distinct possibility at 87, she'll go back to England to
sit in her chair in front of the telly and shortly die. These times have
rejuvenated her and Lydia, both, along with better communications than
they've ever had in their lives.

And, a "simple" bottom job had a quantum shift when the ham-handed
sander/grinder we hired to take off the bottom paint not only took off all
the paint AND barrier coat but chunks of fiberglass as well. That we
discovered the potential for future blisters was serendipitous, and, the
resultant bottom redo (all the places beefed up with fiberglass as well as
drying out the hull/repairing grinds, plus the fairing we're doing now) is a
long-term investment.

And, as we do everywhere we go, paying it forward, lately, has meant that
we sort of rescued a man with not only his own kids, but two relatives-kids
whose parents weren't capable of parenting, laid off in a corporate shuffle
from a manager's position at a Lexus dealership, but, before that,
experience in a boat yard which stopped doing any sort of work (storage only
now).

Below, you're right - he asked for, and received, $10 an hour. We helped
him sell his car on craigslist, and, this week, finally found him a
permanent job laminating boat hulls with a local manufacturer. James
Longboard, as we nicknamed him when he started with us, will be sorely (see
meds below) missed. Not only was he an additional sander, he was very good
at it...


Let's look at the cost of the lay days alone.

365 days at 15 dollars a day = $5,475

About right. Live-aboard, workyard and storage is right at $500/mo.

365 days at a 50 dollar a day materials cost = $18,250


Not so much. For example, currently we're putting on more AdTech in our
final fair. About $10 a day, plus another couple of bux for sandpaper. If
you look at the gallery, you'll see the boot stripe primer Lydia did one
day. That one is closer in cost, as that's about $50 in material you see.
Until we get to the actual boot stripe, our material costs are miniscule by
comparison, even counting the amortized new material and welding on the bow
roller assembly (did you check out the pix on that, like you did on some
other link you denigratingly provided?), the single most expensive activity
in our refit. A new staysail was more or less the same cost, but it wasn't
part of our original plan, so we look at that as an opportunistic
improvement (rather than a planned, and critical, one like the anchor
assembly) in our cost accounting.
..

365 days figuring ten bucks per hour labor cost = $3,650

Heh. I wish we could get away with $10 a day average.


Skippy probably pays for metered electricity at about $25 per month = $300

Nope, included, so our 5KW AC and three people, sometimes, simultaneously
running sanders, is included in our live-aboard lay day cost.


Travel lift in and out = $250

Probably a bit low at 45LOD. You forgot our hang-and-drop when we did the
bottom of the keel, too.


Ben Gay and other meds for the old aching back = $100

Heh. While we haven't managed to figure out how to get an endless supply by
killing a cell and returning a battery to WalMart each year, their generic
ibuprofen and acetaminophen, at 500 each for under $10, are our meds of
choice. No liniment, but yes, we have old, aching muscles - but, a lot more
of them, these days!


Let's assume water is no charge.

So the approximate bill to date for Flying Pig, an old Morgan that MIGHT
fetch about 30 grand these days, amounts to 28,025 bucks. WOW! Talk about
throwing good money after bad!!!

Doesn't this beat all?

Wilbur Hubbard

Your estimation of the sale price achieved for our home is as far off the
mark as the time we've been ashore. It's not relevant, in any event, as
there's probably no boat of any sort which has anything other than the most
rudimentary cosmetics work done on it which will return that cost on sale.
Yours would be a good example. However, ours likely would bring something
on the order of the prices paid new from the factory. I wonder if yours
could say the same...

It's just an investment in our future. Absent major catastrophic events,
nearly all of the significant work we're doing won't have to be addressed
again in the time of our ownership and beyond. Just the fairing we're now
doing has been very revealing. Longboarding, as tedious and
time-consumptive as it is, has revealed that our hull was WAY out of fair,
nearly certainly a product of the peel job which was done many years before
our ownership (and which ineffective drying out led to all the blisters
behind the barrier coat applied at that time), based on the measure being
the solid fiberglass, not our (nor prior) repairs or other distractions.
We're barely into it, but are learning how to make it go faster (the work,
that is; the boat will, too!), and the end is in sight.

We still have the small army of folks coming over to goggle at the job we're
doing. When we're finished, the boat will be faster through the water, and
a piece of cake to wipe down for slime or small grass remediation (assuming
we ever have to do THAT, either, given the prep which will have occurred).
It's not racing fair, but pretty close.

Meanwhile, in the other sniping at you (you and I know better than that)
:{)) you mention that your paint was legal when you or your seller had it
done. Why isn't it, now, or is it just that it's so butt-ugly ;{)) that
Imron won't let it be seen on the shelf in the US any more?

We're going back at it. We're in the middle of a weather system which
hasn't had the first drop of rain in several, nor forecast for several more,
days. More pix to come of the mottling that Dykem reveals during
identification of high and low spots, and our remediation of same, some day
(prolly not immediately, but any and all pix of this refit will be in the
gallery in my sig line, 2011 refit subgallery(ies). The current bottom work
is in the bottom job, final fair and paint subgallery, unpopulated at this
instant in time...

L8R, y'all

Skip, back at it


--
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog

"Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*-absolutely nothing-half so
much worth doing as simply messing, messing-about-in-boats; messing about in
boats-or *with* boats.

In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's
the charm of it.

Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your
destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get
anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in
particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and
you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."