Scrape, scrape, scrape…scrape your bo-at, scrape your bo-at. Yes, “Shake Your Booty” by KC & the Sunshine Band has been running through my brain when I think about this project. No need to thank me for the ear worm.
The last few weekends have seen slow progress on our latest project of scraping the bottom. It’s not that it has been particularly time-consuming. It’s just that intervening circumstances have dictated that we only put in a few hours each weekend.
Columbus Day weekend was a three-day weekend for us, so we hoped to finish rebedding the cleats and the pulpits by the end of Monday. Eventually we will be rebedding everything on the boat, but the rest will wait for another offseason.
We were treated to spectacular weather for all three days, and I’ll admit that on more than a few occasions we found ourselves gazing longingly out on Fishers Island Sound, watching the sailboats and wishing we were among them. Our friends Tom and Arlene had invited us for a ride on their motor boat a few weekends ago, and being on the water again really made us miss it. Oh well. We’ll have plenty of adventures next season. In the meantime, we needed to focus.
Continue reading “Maybe I’ll join the circus in my next life.”
The weekend of September 26th found us back at the boat for more rebedding. I had hoped that by the end of Sunday we would be finished with everything but the stern pulpit and cleats, but alas, it was not to be.
Everything we’ve read said to use duct tape on the underside of the holes that are being repotted with epoxy. The duct tape is supposed to keep the epoxy from running straight through. However, I think it works better if the holes aren’t right next to the hull-deck joint bolts with a healthy dose of sealant smeared around the area. We didn’t want to remove too much of the existing sealant, so we did the best we could on Saturday. Jeff kept pressing on the duct tape, and I kept refilling the holes. It seemed like a losing battle, and when we returned on Sunday we discovered we were right. We had several holes for the bow pulpit and the “gate” stanchions that were only partially filled. Oh well. At least there was a bit of a plug that we could work with.
The weekend of September 12th was fairly low-key. Jeff had pointed out that we needed to build in some occasional down time where we simply stayed home. It’s easy for me to get hyper-focused and go-go-go, so I knew that he was right. As a result, we decided that we would go to the boat on Saturday only.
Saturday the 12th found us at Shenny bright and early to help remove the sailing school boats for the season. Many hands made light work, so next it was off to Defender and Home Depot for our weekly visits. Once we were back, Jeff sanded the four fiberglass patches and filled and faired them. All that was left to do was to put a few layers of epoxy resin on each patch and this big project would be finished! We needed to wait for the filler to cure before adding the resin, so it wasn’t going to be officially finished until the following weekend, but it still felt good.
Continue reading “A big project finally crossed off the list – and on to the next one.”
Adventures on the Club 