S/V Mandolin Still in the boat yard

Day 14:

Todd: I wake up this morning with a scratchy throat feeling not well. I
made pancakes for Ellen and Cutter Jones, after which I took another long
nap. Ellen epoxied the rudder and the front of the keel today. By the
afternoon I finally had enough energy to help with some sanding to fair
out the rudder in preparation for a couple coats of fiberglass. Mike and
Kim from Nimbus are letting us borrow two sanders. This is a wonderful
thing since I started to develop blisters on my thumb by hand sanding
yesterday. Kyle and Stephanie from Cutter Jones have some extra 1/4 inch
plywood that I cut up to make some fairing boards. These are 3 inches
wide by 3 feet long. After attaching sandpaper they are good for taking
off the high spots along the hull or the rudder. I looked at purchasing
one of these in the states, but they were too stiff and also cost almost
$50. I am feeling a bit better after taking a long hot shower and soaking
in the hot tub at the marina. The catamaran next to us should go in the
water tomorrow

Day 15:

Todd: Slept most of the morning. The Catamaran went in the water as
planned. One of these days Mandolin will be able to sail away from the
yard too. Now all three workers are grinding on Mandolin. I was not
feeling well enough to supervise so I went over to our friend's boat,
Caliope, and took a nap there. Ellen got a ride into the CCC supermarket
to do a major provisioning trip. We now have a lot of the staples we need
for cooking aboard Mandolin again.

Day 16:

Todd:
Another unproductive day for me except that I did dishes and am finally
feeling better. Lalo and Jesus (Hesoos) showed up for work today and made
good progress on our hull. One of the high up managers was in the yard
today talking with the workers and looking at the boats. They now have a
new yard manager. Management changes scare us. We have heard stories of
prices increasing dramatically and rules changing overnight. We are
keeping of fingers crossed.

A comerant (fish bird) wandered over to Mandolin today. I understand from
the workers that he was flying along and hit something and landed in the
boat yard. I suspect a hurt wing or something. I don't know why this
comerant likes Mandolin, but he proceeded to sit right down in the puddle
on the ground created by the outflow from our sink and nose around in it
for a bit. Then he fell asleep near the keel. When I saw him next he was
still asleep with Jesus grinding the hull a few feet above his head just
covering him in fiberglass dust. I put on a pair of work gloves and
picked him up for a long walk over to the marina where I set him on a
beach. A few hours later he was back. I guess we have a new pet as he is
now camped out just behind the boat. I almost stepped on him coming home
just now.

We are finding all sorts of surprises now that we are taking the layer of
hydrolized mat off the boat. Several more blisters are now apparent that
we would have missed before. Also Lalo found a hollow part on the
trailing edge of the keel and had to take one layer of cloth off on the
Starboard side of the keel. So now we are signed up to refiberglass that
part of the keel to add strength back. This is becoming a huge job, but
at least I feel we are doing it right instead of cutting corners.

Day 17:

Ellen: Our pet cormorant decided we were boring and waddled off toward the
ocean. If we were able to go back into the water, we certainly would.

Todd was smart today. He, unfortunately, was still feeling ill, so he
watched movies at a friend's boat who are in the states. Wish I did that
today! Instead, I rode my bike up to Ace Hardware. I felt like a kid in
a candy shop with all the cool things available for sale. I found the
sandpaper we were looking for, a new hose nozzle (ours went missing :{,
and a wire brush. Everything was grand until I got to the checkout and
realized I hadn't put my purse into my backpack. Lo siento, no tengo
dinero. Regreso mas tarde. (I'm sorry, I don't have money. I'll return
later.) Boy did I feel dumb; and what a waste of time. I started to ride
back home and got as far as the Malecon (the waterfront) when my bike felt
much rougher than normal. I had the ultimate time waster: a flat tire.
So a 10 minute ride became a 30 minute walk with nothing yet accomplished.
Luckily, I got back in time to catch the noon shuttle with my bike to
Marina de La Paz at the other end of town near which the bicycle repair
shop is. Life got even better when a friend with a vehicle was able to
give me a ride to the repair shop. At the repair shop I had adventures
with broken Spanish on my side and no English on the shop lady's side. We
were able to sort of understand each other. I purchased two tubes and a
repair kit and she let me borrow a wrench, a screwdriver and a pump. A
half an hour and two dirty hands later I was on my way.

I decided I definitely needed a mental break and found willing partners in
lethargy at Marina de La Paz. At 3:15, almost 5 hours after I had begun
my errands, I figured I'd better get with it.

Also, if I hurried, I could be done with my errands and arrive back at
Mandolin when the workers were done grinding, i.e. making noise. I
stopped at the grocery store, the tortillaria, two hardware stores and was
home by 5pm. Thus what could have take me two hours (maybe three with
some farting around) took me 6 1/2 hours. Hey just another fun bottom job
kind of day. Did I mention that Todd was watching movies and being fed
chicken soup by Cutter Jones during my trials and tribulations? At times,
today felt like a good day to go hide.

Day 18:

Todd: A new marine store is opening up at Marina Palmira next to where we
have our boat. It is a Coast Chandlery done by Jim who has a store by the
same name in Cabo San Lucas. We were one of the first 20 people to bring
an autographed photo of their boat to the store and received a T-shirt and
small utility knife. The store looks like it has a lot of good stuff and
they say they will beat any price we can find in Baja by 5%. The workers
finished grinding off the white hydrolized mat today. I started tapping
on the hull with a half dollar coin to determine if there were blisters
that we couldn't see before and circled them with a pencil, then Jesus and
Lalo came along and ground out all the new ones. I am glad we took off
the hydrolized mat because there are probably 30 blisters that we didn't
see before. I figure they will finish grinding tomorrow, then we can
start putting back all the stuff we ground off in the form of fiberglass,
filler and barrier coat. Ramiro worked on another boat today which came
about by my showing the manager some of his work on Mandolin that we
weren't happy with. It is a tough decision, but I don't feel it is good
for their workers to learn how to use a grinder on our lovely boat. Ellen
made a wonderful tabouli salad for lunch and this was supplemented by
hummus and lime on a flour tortilla for dinner. Who needs pita bread when
in Mexico?

Day 19:

Todd: I took the 8:00 shuttle into town this morning to buy colloidial
silica filler and fiberglass. After which, I supervised Lalo and Jesus as
the finished the grinding of the blisters we found since removing the
hydrolized mat. So we should be done grinding. I feel that we have
finally accomplished what was supposed to be done by the yard before we
arrived almost three weeks ago. I am really glad that we were here to be
able to supervise the work that they were doing, but a the same time they
were supposed to have completed this work 6 months ago so the boat could
properly dry out. Ellen fiberglassed another compartment over our keel
where water was leaking into the encapsulated part. This was a difficult
process because she was knealing on the floor, reaching lower into the
bilge without being able to completely see what was going on. After dark
we found the cause of a crack on the outside of our hull. By shining a
flashlight on the outside of the hull, we were able to see the corner of
the pan where it is tabbed into the hull. This hard spot caused the crack
where the hull flexes around it. The plan is to grind out and repair the
crack then glass around the pan to distribute the stress over a larger
area of the hull. For other Cal 34 owners, keep an eye on this area. It
is located on the port side under the set of drawers in the forward cabin
where the aft part of the V-berth pan touches the hull

Day 20:

Todd: Lalo filled the aft part of our keel with epoxy and collodial
silica then wet out all the blisters with West System Epoxy. After he
left Ellen and I faired part of the hull with fairing boards. We also
sanded each blister now that the epoxy had dried. I got our the grinder
and took off some fiberglass around the crack on the outside of the we
talked about yesterday. We plan on fiberglassing a patch tomorrow.

Today was a difficult day for us in that we had several disagreements with
Lalo about the best way to apply the filler, whether to squeegy the resin
after application and when the fairing compound should be applied. We had
one idea in mind and he took off doing things another way. There were
different expectations on both sides and when we show him the literature
to support our planned way of doing things he discounts them by saying
that he has done many boats his way and it is the best. We agreed to talk
on Monday about each step we are going to do from now on before doing work
so that we are all in agreement about what is happening. We should come
up with an acceptable plan for both of us. In the mean time we are
fairing the hull as much as possible and filling the deaper blisters with
fiberglass since we doubt they will take the time to cut our pieces of
cloth and epoxy each layer in.

Day 21:

Todd: Today was a good day. Ellen cooked us Spanish frittata's for
breakfast then we figured out a better way to remove the amine blush from
cured epoxy using a scotch brite pad and soap. The rest of the day was
spen filling the 15 deepest blister first with layers of fiberglass then
after that had partially cured a smooth layer of colloidial silica as a
fairing compound. Most of the rest of the blisters will only need to be
filled with the colloidial silica fairing compound after they are sanded
out.

Had a good chat with Rudolfo about the work we want done on the boat and
how it is to be done. We will meet with him and Eduardo who can translate
for us and Lalo the main worker on our boat. Hopefully this will get us
all on the same page about what we want to have happen from here on out.
Boat Yard 8

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