By C45Sanctuary on 3/22/2008 5:01 PM

By C45Sanctuary on 3/22/2008 10:13 AM

Yeah.  Mud.  Thick, caked on mud.  Google “Texas mud storm” to read about how this freak of nature happened.  Mud actually fell out of the sky for several hundred miles.  It’s either because of Mexico or, depending upon your google results, flying saucers.  When I got here the boat looked like it had been doing some serious off-roading and I don’t mean off-road-and-sailing-in-the-water kind of off roading.  It took me two hours just to get the mud I could REACH off the boat.  The top half of the mast is still covered.  So that, plus my screwup on the windows, took most of my day.

As for the window screwup.  Oh boy.  I had figured it wouldn’t take that long to remove six small windows, clean em, and put them back on with new sealant.  The first window was a BITCH to remove.  I took off all the screws (no two were alike) easily enough and tried to gently pry it off.  No go.  It had been secured using something resembling concrete.  But, since it leaked, it had to be removed and redone. I couldn’t scrub the topside without fixing the window, or I’d end up with a lot of water runoff flooding through the broken window  seal and into the oat, which would violate the first rule of boating.  "Water stays on the OUTSIDE of the boat."

I went aboard and into the master bathroom.  It was a bit easier using the utility knife to cut into the sealant, but it was still going very slowly.  I finally got the window off (it took three hours of gently scraping, prying, and scraping some more.  I then went inside to finish out the bathroom part of the window.  But, right when I entered the master bedroom, I saw a oval shaped hole with light pouring in.  I had forgotten that the master bedroom had two oval-shaped portals as well, which is easy to understand if you know that they’re blacked out so no light gets through.  So, I spent several hours removing a window that leaked a tiny amount on rare occasion, and still hadn’t touched the bathroom window.  GRRRRRRR.

So I go back outside and finish removing the correct window this time.  It took maybe 5 minutes.  Go figure.

I then prepped the master bedroom window with new sealant and repositioned it in the correct place.  Fourteen screws later it was done.

I then do the same procedure on the bathroom window.  Spacers, sealant, and get ready to put it into position and … hey .. wait … this isn’t matching up.  I then saw I had put the spacers and the new sealant ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE GLASS.  Oh GAWD. Now my screw holes don’t match up, and the inside of the glass is, shall we say, less than perfect condition.  It might be fixable with buffing but I dunno.  I think its jacked.  It'll be a major pain to remove it again since it's new sealant, but that's what I'll have to do at some point in the future.

By this time it was around 4:30, maybe 5pm.  I took a short break then mixed up a TSP-substitute cleaning solution.  While it’s a total pain in the ass to reposition four ladders so I can reach a few linear feet that’s 12 feet off the ground, and have to keep repositioning the ladders every few feet, lemme tell ya.  That TSP stuff works great.  If it hadn’t gotten dark I’d still be scrubbing away.  The hull looks very nice with the grime gone.  I can just imagine how nice it will look with new paint.

By C45Sanctuary on 3/21/2008 1:26 PM

I had to make a trip to Lowes and Wal-Mart already.  The screws that held on the first window Im resealing (because it's the one that leaks like a screen door) had a different sized and type of screw in just about every screw hole.  Plus, it was a mixture of phillips head and standard.  Ugh.  So, now I get to fill in the old screw holes with wood filler and wait a bit for it to harden.
 
It took me FIFTEEN MINUTES to check out at Lowes and I was the second person in line.  Twice.  The first line had a guy who was in the final stages of buying some lumber.  But, the cashier couldn't find a price for one of the pieces, so what looked like a short wait turned out to be five minutes with zero progress.  The line next to me had four people in it at one point.  When it got down to just the last person, who was again in the final stages of checking out, I moved lines.  The cashier in my line was nowhere to be found.  So, as soon as I get into the other line, this guy whips out temporary checks to pay for his purchase.  Took another ten minutes to get the check authorized.  And, to make it more frustrating, as soon as I moved to the new line, the cashier from the old line reappeared along with a line of people checking out.  So I watched another four groups of people check out while I was stuck in line behind the jackwad with the temporary check.
 
My purchase was a total of $3.01.  I wanted to just go on a shooting rampage.
 
So, I then went across the street to Wal-Mart.  I needed plastic cement, specifically the kind used in model toys.  It melts the plastic parts together, kind of like welding plastic, which is different than superglue which only creates a strong bond.  Wal-Mart doesn't SELL models anymore, and that meant they didn't sell model glue either.  I had to get crappy old superglue which doesn't quite work as well as plastic cement does.

By C45Sanctuary on 3/13/2008 11:29 PM

Basically, there's been a lot of woodwork restoration in progress the past two weeks.  All of the exterior wood fixtures that could be removed were brought back to home port.  Some of the worst looking items were actually the easiest to restore.  Fortunately, I got to them before they were beyond hope.  Check out the Photo Album for before and after pics.

The mahogony trim from the sail locker looked the worst.  It took a few hours of sanding (80 grit, then 120, then 220) to get them back into shape.  Then, between one and two coats of varnish was applied a day for several days.  After half a dozen coats they were wet sanded with 600 grit, allowed to fully dry, then received another coat of varnish.  After drying overnight they were wet sanded again and received another coat of varnish.  They look like showroom pieces now.

The beverage holder poses a bit of a challenge.  It was restored using the same process, but took twice as long.  The interior of the beverage holder couldn't be varnished (nor sanded very well) due to it's shape.  It looks great from the outside but the inside will be less than perfect.

The folding navigation table was in fair shape.  After disassembling, it took about six hours of sanding to get the wood ready for the first coat of varnish.  It will probably take an hour a day, for at least a week, to finish the varnishing process using the same steps described above.

By C45Sanctuary on 3/2/2008 12:00 AM

I visited for a few days (Feb 28 - Mar 2) and got quite a bit accomplished:

• The keel now has at least two coats of primer.  Places that had minor repairs have as many as five or six coats of primer, plus at least one layer of marine epoxy putty
• The rudder is repaired, faired, and primered at least twice
• The skeg has at least two coats of primer
• The deck and cabin exterior have been scrubbed
• The deck from the bow to the sail locker has been sanded with 40-grit
• All of the permanently attached woodwork has been stripped, sanded, and received at least two coats of varnish

It was discovered, after a few days aboard, that the shore power had been disconnected for several weeks time.  The breaker circuit kept getting thrown within a few minutes.  It took a while for me to realize that the power inverter has lost it's programming and defaulted back to drawing 50 amps.  So, the interior lights have been running off of the ships batteries for several weeks.  The AC inverter seems to be working well because I didn't even notice shore power wasn't on until I'd been aboard for a few days.  I guess that also means the battery bank is pretty solid, because it was able to supply power to the interior lights for who-knows-how-long, as well as supply standard 110v AC, for several days before I noticed.

I realized something was weird when, after I had used the microwave several times, as well as the hot water heater, the microwave started acting funny (shrieked and then powered off).  It turns out this is what happens when it isn't able to draw the desired wattage.  So, now I need to figure out why the Heartbeat Monitor is whacked out.  In the meantime I have the portable battery charged set to recharge the main battery bank.  I am guessing it will take several days before they're anywhere near a full charge again.  600 amp hours takes a while.