"Don't go looking for trouble."

Two days of scraping and the paint is just flaking off like mad.   

After he dropped the boat off, Bruce told me, as his only instructions, “Don’t go looking for trouble.” But trouble found me.  I have pink electrician’s tape and started marking all the places where there was rot, then I stopped because I was using too much tape. 

 The mother of all rot.  This  hole actually got bigger when Paul told me to remove all of it.  Yikes!   

I took the hatch covers off to let the inside dry out but then Paul came by when I wasn’t here and filled the bilge with water.  He said he was washing it out and when it dries he’ll vacuum it and put all the ballast (big lead pigs I think, or maybe really uniform-looking rocks) back in the bilge.  He is unsure if we will get to painting the cabin (such as it is) this year.  

 I have found that scraping the deck is very relaxing—in the evening sun I can sit on the deck and take note of every plank.   I know that many have been replaced since 1966, and in 1990 Andy, Jack’s “protégé,” refitted the hull—whatever that means—I think it means that the hull is tighter now, and it actually looks better than the rails and the deck-- but it’s still Jack’s boat and that feels nice. I used to “help” him when he built boats—in the boat shop right behind where I live now, in the house his father, my grandfather Moses built—but my assistance involved maybe holding planks for him while he nailed them in, or doing something to steady a piece of wood when it was going in the steam box—nothing really amazing or technical.  But I remember being there, and in a way, it was like watching history happening.