S/V Mandolin Boat Yard Frustrations

Boat Yard Frustrations

Day 28:

Todd: Today was a day of recovery. After sleeping in we had breakfast
then promptly fell asleep again. Since we didn't feel like cooking lunch
we took the shuttle into town to have some fish tacos. The one
accomplishment we had was to get some 50 grit grinding disks for the
Makita grinder that Kelly on Alma let us borrow. Back to the boat for a
nap before the Valentine's Day get together in the evening. We saw our
friends Chris and Kim from Jasmine Isle as well as Grover who used to be
our dive master in Hawaii. Again we walked home and were complete tired
when we arrived. We have been at this for four weeks now and hope that we
are more than half way through. The big unknown is how long it will take
us and the workers to get the hull back to its original fair shape.
Hopefully it won't take the four months that it has take Cutter Jones to
get their boat fair next to us. Of course we do have a smaller boat.

Day 29:

Todd: Valentines Day in the boat yard. Lalo and Jesus show up and we
finish applying epoxy and colloidal silica to the waterline and the keel
that needs to be faired before we apply fiberglass to make up for the
layers we needed to grind off. Unfortunately we ran out of colloidal
silica before we finished with the keel so the workers took the rest of
the day off to organize their shop. I rode into town to exchange a tool
for some sand paper and check our email. Once back at the boat I tried
out the new wire brush adapter for our drill to polish our propeller. It
worked pretty well, but I still need to spend some more time on it. Ellen
and I were having a pretty depressing evening. The boat has become a
disaster inside after a month of working. Instead of flowers Ellen said
she wanted to have a clean table, counter and place to read a book for the
evening. So off to work I went, cleaning dishes, the sink, stove, table,
ice box and organizing books and papers. With her help things are looking
pretty good in the main cabin, just don't look into the quarter berths, V
berth or cockpit. Those will have to come another night.

Day 30 - 33

We went and played hooky in Cabo San Lucas on these days. Our friend Tim
is the manager of Marina Cabo San Lucas. The marina owns some apartments
and we were able to stay in one of these during our stay. Pretty nifty.

A friend's car broke down in La Paz and we were able to drive it down to
Cabo San Lucas for her. It was a brand new Chevy Tahoe, similar to a
Suburban. Wow, talk about traveling in style. Because we had a vehicle,
we were able to enjoy an hour in Todos Santos and an hour at a secluded
beach on our way down.

Our first full day in Cabo we read books at a coffee shop for a few hours,
slept the afternoon away, went fishing with a friend in the evening,
cooked dinner on Tim's boat (stir fry - no fish), and then talked until
the wee hours with Tim.

The next day we went out snorkeling on La Princesa, a beautiful catamaran
built and chartered by Frank, a good friend of Tim's. It was so good to
be out on the water and even better to not be responsible for the boat.
The drinks and entertainment flowed freely and a good time was had by all.
Todd and I both highly recommend La Princesa for a water excursion in
Cabo. We then, of course, slept the afternoon away.

We survived the trip back to Mandolin in spite of a high-speed near miss
in the taxi between the bus station and the boatyard. We weren't very
amused. The headlines flashed through our minds: "Two sailors die in car
crash". Quotes in the article would include: "I always worried about them
crossing oceans and here they died crossing town", "they always told us to
be careful on the highway when we told them to be careful on the water; I
wondered why until now." Cars sure scare us a lot more than sailing the
open ocean. What's more dangerous: being alone on the water in a well
found boat, or travelling at 60 mph in a big hunk of metal with other
hunks of metal travelling toward you at 60 mph - for a combined speed of
120 mph - and passing about 4 feet away from your hunk of metal? Think
about it....

Well, we did arrive in one piece, albeit a little shook up. Mandolin
looks good. The workers are almost done sanding the epoxy filler. They
are sanding the hull as I type. A joy to listen to.

Day 34:

Todd: Today being Saturday means the workers only are here until 1:00 pm.
Jesus sanded with the orbital sander while I occupied my time on small
projects like polishing the propeller and getting unpacked. This
afternoon I got out the fairing board with 80 grit sandpaper and started
at the bow working aft. This went pretty well. I didn't accomplish too
much, but the nice thing about the fairing board is that it shows you
where the low spots are on the hull since they don't get sanded. I marked
these with a pencil so we can fill them with thickened epoxy. It appears
that after the second pass of filling that Mandolin should have a pretty
fair hull. I also cleaned out the bilges some more in preparation for
barrier coating them. This evening I coated one side of the rudder with
thickened epoxy so we can work on fairing it tomorrow. Ellen did a
shopping trip and got us two more containers of colloidal silica, the
stuff we use to thicken the epoxy. We have now used over four of the 6
oz. containers of this lightweight thickener. It is pretty spendy stuff
at almost $20 a container. If I had it to do over again I would have
purchased the large box size in the states.

Day 35:

Ellen: Sunday means no workers in the boat yard. Today was fairing board
day. A fairing board is about 2 feet long and 3 inches wide. Todd made
some for us out of plywood and attached wood handles. We have stickyback
sandpaper designed just for these boards. The fun part comes when you put
on a bunny suit, goggles, and air filter mask then take the board and
start sanding the hull. The board is flexible which allows it to form to
the hull. The idea is to sand down the high spots and identify low spots
that need more filler.

Todd employed a good idea from his ski racing days. When skiers tune
their metal ski edges, they mark them with a black felt pen. Then, as
they use a file to sharpen the edges, the black areas show where the edges
still need to be sharpened. Todd applied this technique to Mandolin by
using a pencil to scribble on the hull. After using the fairing board,
the areas that still have pencil marks are low and need more filler to
build them up to the rest of the surface. Then of course, we need to
apply more filler and then sand some more with the fairing board. Our
friends on Cutter Jones call it the Fair Master as it is quite a bit of
work and develops muscles you never knew you had. I've decided that the
Labor Day holiday is not meant for office slugs like me.

In the midst of all this fun, our good friend Grover showed up to help us
out. He was quite the animal with the fairing board. It's kind of
embarrassing when your friend works harder than you do on your own boat.
I fed him lunch and beers and Todd promised computer assistance as
compensation for his wonderful help.

Day 36:

Todd: Today was one of the most frustrating we have had while being in
the yard. After all the work we did on the weekend getting ready for the
second pass of epoxy very little happened today. It wasn't until noon
that Lalo finally got started. The morning was spent getting the water
system in the boatyard working so we could wash off the hull. At noon
they brought over the truck that has an air compressor and blew air over
the hull to get the dust out of all the tidy voids that are inherent with
fiberglass hulls and our new fills. Where things got frustrating we that
we had everything ready for them to move the stands so that we could fill
the blisters under the stands at the same time as we did the second pass
on the rest of the boat. Apparently Lalo had other ideas and didn't want
to do this after our repeatedly asking. Finally, Lalo told Ellen to go
talk to Eduardo the manager. Eduardo said to have Lalo move the stands.
Of course now it is 1:00 and they take their lunch break. So 2:00 comes
around and we inform Lalo what Eduardo has said but he still refuses
saying that he needs to talk with Eduardo himself. Unfortunately Eduardo
won't be back until 4:00 in the afternoon so Lalo walks off to work on
other boats. Finally at 4:00 we go find Eduardo and all have a big
discussion. It turns out that Lalo doesn't want to move the stands until
we are done with the barrier coat so we only have to move the stands once.
This is a little surprising to us since they have move the stands many
times already on Mandolin and other boats without so much as a second
thought. We decide that this is probably ok not to move the stands except
that it will be more difficult to fair the areas under the stands to the
newly barrier coated area. It is just so frustrating having such and
language barrier as well as a cultural barrier. There is this machismo
thing with they guys down here where they feel that they must be correct
and get their way. Lalo is a master at this and it completely irritates
us since we are paying for his work and not his expertise. If it weren't
for the yard implementing a $50 fee/day to do our own work on the boat we
would have kicked all the workers off our boat already. After our
discussion with Eduardo and Lalo at the end of the day it appears that we
all understand a bit more what we are doing from here. We will see how it
goes.

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