"Progress, not perfection"

Steve came over the day before yesterday, and boy was I glad to see him.  His Cape Dory sailboat  Raven is down the street on a mooring in West Cove.  He lives near where I used to, and I know him from another life, long ago.  He doesn’t get down here much because of his finish carpentry business and his Christmas tree farm.  He didn’t come much at all last year, but as far as Raven goes, that’s okay because all he has to do is look at that boat, or anything for that matter, and all of a sudden it’s perfect.  He is one of those people who if they weren’t so nice and sweet and friendly, you would loathe with an unspeakable envy.  He is fabulous at everything he does.  That’s how I met him—he decided to try bicycle riding 25 years ago.  In two weeks he was better than even the racers in our group.  He decides that sailing might be fun.  Five minutes and he’s cruising alone to the Caribbean in a perfectly refurbished yacht.  During this visit he told me he’d gone to the Grand Canyon and paddled 240 miles of the Colorado river in 16 days.  Of course he did!  

There are so few people in this life whose successes and brilliance I can truly enjoy without reservation or secret jealousy.  He is one of them.  Oh, I’ve adored him for ages.  But he is also fairly perceptive, and back in those cycling days it was a wise man who steered clear of me.  I was not known for my . . . let us just say . . . stability in the relationship department.

But Steve heard about Jeff Brown and wanted to come see it, and I was half-dreading the inevitable visit because there is this part of me that is still so angry and dismayed that there are these simple things about how to fix boats that I do not know, and they do, and they are probably right, and so I will look and feel like an idjit when strangers (practically) come over and say, “Well, of course you’ve tried fastening the whoozie to the stringers bracing the whatchamacallit, because you can’t remove paint without somethingorothering to the cotton batting . . .” and I will blurt out “Bite me” and remain none the wiser.

But no . . .there he was grinning like a maniac on my porch, happy as always about whatever he was doing that day, which was gathering a thousand pine cones from the Noank Shipyard’s trees to make wreaths in November.  Plus he was going to do a little work on Raven.  He had brought all these very cool tools.  He adored Jeff Brown, was just fascinated by it, and then suggested, ever so gently, that really a boat like this deserves, well, perfection. 

I told him I did not think that was what the current overseers had in mind.  But I somehow forgot this about Steve—nothing in this world deserves to be done half-assed, especially something old and pretty and made of wood. So we got onto the deck and he brought out the Milwaukee heat gun—a magnificent contraption that, in his hands, practically chased the paint off the deck and made my preliminary sanding job look like crap.  “You’ll still have all those craters, even if you feather it, but if you take the paint off, then you can sand it and with a good coat of primer you won’t need to paint it every year; it will be great.”  He discussed scraper types, how to hold it, and told me to file the sander if it got dull.  With all those new scarper-filing skills I developed at some point.)

Then, like a crack dealer, he showed me the detail sander—a snazzy, zillion-dollar model called Fein, which he said was “worth every penny” and which I doubt either Paul or Bruce owns, but we zipped around fittings and dug into corners and I thought, oh my Christ I will be here forever now.

Bless Steve’s heart, he left me the heat gun but had to take the sander (good-bye, little marvel!), wished me luck, and poof! he was gone.

So yesterday I had a go at the heat gun.

Funny thing, it is not as easy as it looks. In fact, it is an art. But when I slowed down and worked with the grain, it got a little easier (although I thought the boat would self-immolate at any second).

I then decided to abandon the deck and just concentrate on the black bulwark (scupper area) and the black rail below that. (oh, and Steve also suggested we remove the brass rubrail to get at the wood underneath.  The boys will love that.)

It took me about an hour to do about a third of one side.

I hope the heat gun and my arm hold out!

 

Before (left) and after--it's worth it but man, my progress is turtle-like

 

 This is as far as I got yesterday.  I think when it's sanded (and of course all the cracks are filled) it will be swell.

But oh my god what am I going to do about the deck?  That will be frigging hours of work!  But it looks so much better than just being sanded.

[I will confess I went online to see how much electricity a heat gun uses.  Surprisingly, not much; about 18 cents an hour, or $27 a month for 5 hours a day every day.  Which I will not be doing!  Hey, I had to look.  I am nothing if not frugal.] 

The green part has too much paint to take off that way.

Paul is not answering my cries for help.

He is letting me stew in Steve’s taunt of perfection.  I really should adhere to the old 12-step slogan: progress, not perfection.

I knew there was a lesson in here somewhere!