poco a poco . . .

Although I took a trip to Mexico, the days I was gone were not marked by idleness.  Paul came by a put in a big fat Dutchman, which Don helped me plane and sand so it now looks like this with primer—pretty good even for a 5-foot paint job.

And I painted the port side and the stern—and ran out of green.  So tomorrow more green will come.

Paul also finished reefing out both sides of the stem and will put cotton in there, as well as parts of the deck, which I have started to fill in with trowel cement. Which I am going to run out of.  Paul says there's more . . . somewhere in the bowels of his cobwebby basement, no doubt.  I can only do this after 2pm when the sun stops beating down on the deck, so I get about 1.5 hours in per day.

Still no helpers.

But the only other awful part is the reefing of the keel, which judging by Paul’s deflated “oh, it's you” whenever I call him, will be the worst part.

The gold leaf turned gray, which I think means it soaked in, so I gave it another coat and will put some varnish on it.

Also started cleaning the bronze rub rail (which you can see lying on the deck in the photo above), with Brasso and a scotch brite, just to get the gunk off.  It’s gonna be brown, like bronze is, but at least it will be clean.

Transom almost done . . . and a visit from the Master

It has been a rainy week, but a Sisyphus-like despair more than anything has kept me from picking up the enormously heavy Bosch 5” sander and re-sanding for the millionth time the battered hull of poor Jeffie.  However, this weekend brought progress, if not joyful things.

I finally stripped, sanded and primed (1st coat) the $%$#@! transom (thank you Maynard Bray and the how-to book of Sanding and Painting for the Truly Anal-Retentive), and now the trowel cement must do its magic. 

Paul has reversed his earlier dictum of “no sanding after the trowel cement goes on,” which I ignored anyway since I found that there were spots I had not alcoholed off that could be sanded/feathered right out.  Plus, I had to put another wad of it in all the seams.

 The four errant planks have been re-fastened to the stem, but Paul now has to put the cotton back in and apparently do it on the other side—which I conveniently troweled right over.  He tried to teach me how to “listen” for loose planks with a plastic (electrician’s) hammer, but I did not get the hang of it (apparently safe-cracker is not a good choice for me for future employment).

After I fill up the cracks in the transom, there’s nothing left for it but to tackle the evil deck, since I have been deserted by my one helper and my tentative second helper has only given me a “maybe” on Facebook.

The good thing about the deck is that gravity can do some of the work, and the sanding should not be so bad.  Except for the bulwark.  That way madness lies.

Paul has been vacuuming out the keel, which in my mind points to a reefing out of the keel soon.

If Jeff does not go in by August I’ll fill up the hold with water and drown myself.