|
Thanksgiving has come and gone, while we are still making progress on the boat. Ran some wires up the mast, did some deck prep and began to roll on some new non-skid. We have begun fairing the keel, doing some work to the core inside the boat, re-painting and finishing the bow, and doing some small work to the bottom of the boat. We are also in the early design stages of a sweet new carbon fiber dodger.
Boat work Things on the boat are still going well. Not as fast as we would like, but we're definitely making progress and doing things properly. After fixing the wire that leads to the masthead light last week, we decided to run another wire up the mast for a strobe light, which is required by the Singlehanded Transpac race committee. We already had a thin green line going up the mast, so I simply attached the new wire and a chaser line to that, and ran them up the mast. We tested the new wire, and everything works. Our awesome new $15 strobe light is still in the mail, so i'll just install it at the masthead when it gets here. 
How I ran the new wire and chaser up the mast. The green line on the right is already up the mast, so I wound it around the new strobe light wire and thin yellow line, then taped the daylights out of it with electrical tape.  After pulling on the green line above, it pulled the strobe light wire and thin yellow line up the mast. So I pulled it through the mast head, and now the wire is run. The yellow line has now effectively replaced the green line, so that next time I need to pull something up the mast, there's already a line there. I made sure to tie everything off at the top. I'm not trying to lose stuff down the mast... Inside the boat, we drilled around in a few places, as we noticed a bit of water coming out of one of the stringers, where we were repairing/ reinforcing them, next to the keel. We found a small amount of moisture in the core. It was isolated to one small spot, from water seeping down into the core, through one of the small stress cracks in the fiberglass. We decided to drill a couple of quarter sized holes in the glass and vacuum bag any moisture out. The good news is that we got all of the moisture out, and everything is dry. The other good news is that we went around and drilled other inspection holes in the boat, and have verified that the entire core of the boat is dry and solid. Good stuff. Now that that stuff is dried out, we're going to re-core (with foam and epoxy) and then re-glass the small holes and begin our repair/ reinforcing of the keel stringers. 
Vacuum bagging the moisture out of the core. Making it totally air tight with plastic and duct tape. The dark spots are merely bare glass where we have ground down all of the white paint, so that our fiberglass will bond. Underneath the vacuum tube is a couple of quarter-sized holes in the top layer of glass with damp foam removed. With all of the deck fittings off of the boat, we have decided to apply new non-skid/ paint the deck, at the same time as we re-paint the bow (where we repaired it) and then re-bed all deck fittings. After sanding down the old non-skid/ deck paint, I taped everything off, and then Don started rolling on new deck paint. It was WAY darker than Don wanted, and wasn't as abrasive as we had hoped, so we mixed in a bunch of white deck paint to lighten the color. At the same time, we also went ahead and dumped the whole can of non-skid granules into the paint and mixed it up. On attempt #2 at painting the deck, things went a lot better. The color is almost as light as before, and there's so much grit in the paint that it should be pretty abrasive. Don seemed pretty happy with it, so I guess it's good. 
Our bow repair almost completed. That is primer on there right now. We will paint it with white deck paint, re-drill holes and re-bed all fittings. The horizontal slit is one that we cut today, for the forestay fitting. 
Way too dark grey deck paint that didn't have enough non-skid in it. Don wasn't happy with it at all, so we added more white paint and grit to the equation. 
Freshly painted bow. Notice how much lighter the deck paint is now than in the pic above. There is a ton of non-skid in that paint, so it should be really abrasive and grippy, even when wet. Once we remove the tape and re-attach all of the fittings, it should look pretty good. We've faired the keel pretty well. It's almost perfectly smooth, and when it is, we'll re-paint it. That should be this week. I've also gone to work fairing the bottom of the boat in a few places. It's a lot more work than might be necessary, but a perfectly smooth hull and perfectly smooth foils should make the boat go through the water that much better. As the boat is on a trailer and everything is so accessible, it just seems like the right time to do this work. 
That rudder is getting pretty fair. Once it's perfect, we'll epoxy seal it and re-paint it. Supposed to rain a lot this week, but hopefully I can find a weather window finish up some deck painting/ touch up work, get the deck fittings re-bedded, finish the rudder and hull work, and finish our reinforcing of the stringers this week. We are also designing a slick new carbon fiber dodger. I'll post up pics as we slowly build it and install it. Thanksgiving Ahhhh, Thanksgiving. Sitting on a couch after eating too much, and trying not to fall asleep from the turkey, being surrounded by family, small children playing in the background, planning what stores to shop at the next day, and the Detroit Lions getting their asses kicked on national TV. This Thanksgiving was everything that the 4th Thursday of November is supposed to be. On a serious note, I got to see my sister for the first time in too long, meet my 14 month old nephew for the first time, and get to know my brother in law and his family much better. Good times. It was a very nice holiday and I had a great time spending it with my sister and her family. And the food was good. 
My sister and I trying to pose for a good Thanksgiving day portrait. 
We had this gnarly weather system come through on Thanksgiving day. It went from blue and sunny to grey and drizzly, to dark and stormy with lots of rain, to hailing, to sunny with rain, and finally grey and sunny with a rainbow. All in like one hour. Pretty impressive to see. This was my favorite pic of the rainbow. Awesome weekend for football. end
 |
