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Shifting sands
Well, sanders...
The last couple of days I've been sanding stainless steel, taking either rusty, dinged, material which is still on the boat, or new, to replace it, mill finish, tube and plate, for the bow roller cage and assembly, to brilliant. Whew! I thought sanding epoxy was hard work! Yet, even stainless yields to my unrelenting pressure and attention. The existing material (still on the bow of the boat) has a couple of grits to go before I take the rouge wheel to it. The stainless material which will be welded in place of the rotted stuff which came off is almost to the point of rouge in a couple of items, but the tubing for the cage is all done. About 12 total feet of 2" pipe has been reduced from a rough gray, with some manufacturing marks and dings removed, to a flawless 400-grit, ready for polish. The 3.5" pipe which will replace the rotted structure on the roller system is to a 220 grit; two more to go. The plates on the end of this pipe, when installed, are ready for polish. When I wasn't doing that, we were refinishing the drinks holder in the cockpit, which sits above the new custom, aysmmetrically leaved (the binnacle is off the centerline of the cockpit due to the shape of the cockpit with the inside walkthrough headroom moving the port side seating closer to the center), cockpit table. The table would impact the binnacle to which it hinges when it's raised, so I did some very careful work with a rotary rasp, and relieved the main table and the two leaves enough to allow it to sit level. Lydia's totally refinished the table before that, to great and wondrous effect. The leaves' support system the builder made for this custom table was simply inadequate, so we cut it off after I designed something which would actually work. I have to source the teak to make it up, and will get the new pulpit teak (goes in the middle of the two anchors; welding the new material up will allow a bigger gangplank, so to speak) at the same time. In between those table ventures, I redid the lay-flat hinge receivers - he'd not removed enough material, allowing the hinges to be "proud" vs flush. After Lydia had already put a dozen loving coats of varnish on it, removing the varnish was much harder than taking off the wood! That's, in part, because I'm now convinced that, our builder just didn't want to mess with teak. Instead, he claimed that one could not get teak that wouldn't double or triple the price, and the source I had didn't actually HAVE teak. (Curiously, it was the place he got the replacement door frame for our forward head. I wonder if THAT wasn't teak, either [J/K, it was a case of proof of my presumption that he was just trying not to have to use teak, not that the place didn't, in fact, HAVE teak].) Instead, he used Spanish Cedar which, properly stained and varnished, has a look of teak. Unfortunately, it's not much harder than balsa. The relief of the binnacle impact area took next to no effort, other than all the cut-and-try so I didn't take off more than needed. It's so soft, we'll have to go to barrel bolts to assure that the screws holding the various fittings don't pull out :{/) After just a bit of working with it, along with misaligned hinges which make the leaves not close "just so" (which also complicated the removal of the material allowing the binnacle not to impact the table - something I knew would have to be done when I designed it), I thought to myself, "I think we're going to wind up having this duplicated in teak somewhere down the road." Lydia, after removing the original leaf support system and trying to repair the damage done by the glue used, before she revarnished that area, said to me over lunch, "I think we'll probably wind up replacing this wood with teak, somewhere where materials and labor are cheap." If she's willing to toss several hundred bux, it's GOTTA be bad! Tomorrow, the Raymarine guy who actually keeps his promise (two prior have not, one multiple times, the other merely refusing to even answer the phone when I call to ask when he'll be here - he left to get a cable to test our new triducer, after a few minutes aboard to assess the work, and never came back) to show up will be here to install the new triducer for the fishfinder. Today I pulled the old one's wires through to the bow, with accompanying strings for leads for the new single cable, removed the Y-valve, and generally made ready for installation. Once that's finished, we'll finish up on the fairing of the hull, interrupted by the need to get the stainless polished for THAT repair/installation, and, out of sheer exhaustion/inertia, my taking a day off from that to do the table hinge mounting and binnacle obstruction relief. We're enjoying the work, and pleased as punch that we've attracted a lot of attention from folks who ohh-and-ahh over what we've done so far, many of them very knowledgeable and experienced with what we're going through. For ourselves, we're glad we're taking the time to do everything just right, as well as fixing lots of stuff we've uncovered along the way. But I'll be very glad when we fill with fuel and water and head back to the Bahamas. If the season doesn't get any more energetic, and we don't get more done than we have, in the time we've been at it, we may not have to worry about hurricane season, and just head south straight from here! The most recent "Peril of Pauline" is our refrigeration/freezer seeming to be taking a dump. Long story which I'll not encumber you with, especially as it's not over yet, but various fixes I've done in the past when this symptom (no cool, compressor's running, or Smart Speed Control doesn't seem to be acting right) showed up occasionally have had no effect. Thus, going from perfect function (8° and 32° in freezer and reefer boxes, even in 90+ heat) to having NO heat removal since sometime last night, this has a heightened sense of urgency. Even if I get it to work again, we're going to have to do something "final" about it before we cast off, as, if it's not resolved, it will only get worse in the wilds of wherever we are. As the techs I've spoken with can't tell from the symptoms what it is, we're about to get expensive, likely, as we track down what's really happening so we can address it. Cool! (well, it would be nice for it to be cooling, but not yet...) One day not too long from now, we may also get to test the shifting sands outside the small channel entrance to where we've been holed up in the dirtiest yard in the East, yet the favorite of so many cruisers we've met in our various travels, I lose count. Several dozen of them said hi immediately after we arrived, or as they've been coming in while we're here. So, Riverside Marina obviously has a lot going for it. One day I'll have a log posting reviewing our time here, but it suffices to say that it's a bit of a Peyton Place in terms of intrigue, gossip, misinformation, fueding and nearly everything else other than wife-swapping (though I can't be absolutely sure that doesn't happen, either!), but also the home of the most caring and giving folks you'll likely encounter. L8R, y'all Skip -- 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 "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain |
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