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Unfortunately, it began badly. At 5:30 I woke up to go potty.
Todd got
up after me. I felt the boat shake a bit as Todd was getting
out of bed,
which normally doesn't happen. The boat usually shakes a bit
when someone
is sanding strongly or when someone is climbing the ladder. Usually
the
ladder bangs a bit on the toerail of Mandolin when someone begins climbing
the ladder. I heard no sound, just felt a slight shake of the
hull. It
was enough to make me notice, but not enough to think much of it.
However, when Todd was done on the toilet, he happened to glance toward
the cockpit and saw the shadow of a man entering it. Not being
fully
awake and not expecting anything out of order, he thought it was the
new
night guard looking around our boat. He went to the companionway
and
said, "Hola." The man ran down the ladder and ran away from Mandolin
accompanied by another man. Todd informed me that two men had
just
climbed our ladder while he quickly dressed to investigate. Rather
disquieting information when your a woman naked in your bed.
I dressed
and joined Todd.
The only items missing were our Teva sandals and a pair of my tennis
shoes. They were at the bottom of the ladder leading up to our
boat.
Instead of being scared by the intrusion, I became immediately angry
that
items had been stolen from us. We went to find the night guard.
We found
him sleeping. We woke him and told him, in Spanish, that two
men had been
at our boat and our shoes were gone. There is a boatyard dog
that was not
in the boatyard that night. The guard asked where the dog was.
I was so
angry that he had been sleeping, allowing intruders to enter the less
than
secure boatyard. I yelled and cursed at him that it wasn't the
dog's job
to watch our boat. I don't know when I have ever yelled at a
stranger.
But how dare he sleep when he is paid to guard the yard? He called
the
police and we woke the other people living on their boats. Turns
out that
the intruders had boarded these other two boats, as well. The
morning was
dewy and footprints could be seen in their cockpits and on one of the
boats, all around their decks. They were very quiet as Annie
had felt her
boat slightly shake, but did not hear them walk all over her deck.
Scary.
What is also scary is that nothing else was taken but our shoes.
We think
they were looking the place over to see what they could haul away at
a
later date.
So we met the yard manager at the gate when he arrived at 8:00.
Todd had
already filed a report with the police when they had arrived earlier
in
the morning. We told him what happened including that the guard
was
asleep. The guard denied it, but we pointed out that there was
evidence
that the intruders had boarded three boats and the guard most likely
would
have seen them if he were doing this job. After we got across
just how
angry we were, the manager agreed to pay half the retail value of the
three sets of shoes and to increase security. And then I let
my anger
pass away.
Rick, the captain of Cutwater, had just returned the day before from
a
several day charter. We told him our woes and then I begged a
cup of
coffee. He had lots of wonderful fruit left over from the charter,
so we
chowed down on coffee, fruit and sweet bread. Just the solace
we needed
after a stressful morning. And we agreed to have a potluck dinner
that
night aboard Cutwater.
Having planned to make our special day a day off from the boatyard,
we
headed into town. We couldn't avoid being practical, however,
and managed
to fit in several errands in between fish tacos, ice cream and fresh
squeezed orange juice - a BIG glass was only $1.00.
We made it back to the marina just in time to take a shower, get pretty,
and catch sunset on Cutwater. Our friend Anne and her visiting
friend
Sandy went diving today and contributed a huge calimari steak to dinner.
We had a great evening filled with friends and fun. Rick, Anne
and Sandy
proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk. I'm glad I gave up alcohol
until
Mandolin is back in the water, or I would have joined them. It
was more
fun to stay sober and watch them get stupid. A bad beginning,
but a
terrific ending is much better than the other way around.
Not only did Grover show up to help us fair, but our new friend, Ethan,
from Gypsy Dolphin also came to help us sand and fair. Are we
fortunate,
or what? It was a big fairing day on Mandolin.
In the evening, we got together with our marina friends, Stephanie,
Kyle,
Rick, Anne and Sandy for pizza. Luckily, we decided not to go
into town
for it. Stephanie looked at Todd and said that she didn't think
it
possible to fall asleep with your eyes open, but he was proving her
wrong.
We went home to bed when we were done eating.
Todd's arms were really sore, so I massaged them and then we fell asleep.
Anne, Sandy, Todd and I mooched another coffee and fruit (yes, more
left
over fruit) breakfast from Rick. A French bakery opened in the
marina, so
Todd and I supplied a loaf of still hot, not warm but hot, loaf of
bread.
Good friends, food and coffee sure make boatyard life a lot more bearable.
Gee, then what did we do? Oh, yeah. We faired some more
on Mandolin's
hull. Grover again rode his bike over to help. I think
he's trying for
sainthood. We faired and sanded and faired and sanded and, and,
and
then.... we were done! Mandolin's hull is smooth! We are
planning to
apply the barrier coat primer in the morning. I am so happy and
so tired.
I'm so tired, I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard. Anne
came over a
little bit ago and I grinned from ear to ear about our smooth boat
bottom.
It felt so good to smile really big because I felt so happy.
Tim drove up
from Cabo to spend the night. He took us out to dinner in celebration
of
our recent anniversary and birthday.
The rest of the day was spent at Cutwater where I helped Rick clean
the
membranes of his watermaker and work on the crane that lifts their
dingy.
While we made some progress on the watermaker, it still isn't producing
drinkable water. Ellen came over and baked banana bread and a
dinner of
salad and quesadillas.
The goal is to get rid of every one of them. One thought is to
just goo
the barrier coat in the holes, but the preferred way is not to have
any
holes when we start the barrier coat. So it looks like another
pass with
the primer coat should take care of them. Just add another two
days to
our time in the yard. Drat! Actually this should be time
will spent.
A build up of fatigue from all the work we have been doing caused me
to
curl up with a book and ignore the world for the rest of the day.
Todd,
however, still had energy and sanded more on the dinghy. He also
mounted
backing plates for all the thruhulls with thickened epoxy. We
were
planning to wash and sand the 1000 primer, but because it was a cooler
day, it didn't set up as fast. We decided a full day of curing
would be
best.
Washed and sanded the hull this morning and early afternoon. Well,
Todd
did most of it while I went into town for more supplies and food.
I think
my job title should be Gatherer Chef, with a subtitle of Jill of All
Trades.
This afternoon, while I did laundry, Todd worked on removing the tape
residue at the waterline. We had taped the waterline before we
left the
boat last May so the yard workers would know how far up to grind off
the
gelcoat. Eight months of heat and sun caused most of the adhesive
to
remain on the hull. As well as remove the adhesive, we are also
trying to
clean the gelcoat before we apply the barrier coat and bottom paint.
Rubbing compound and elbow grease didn't do the trick, so it looks
like we
will be buying some fine grit sandpaper tomorrow. Wow, you mean
they make
sandpaper finer than 80 grit?? That's the finest we've used in
the last
two months.
Well, before you think poor Mandolin had a rather rough day, let me
assure
you that Mandolin and her crew were innocent bystanders during most
of the
fun.
We spent the day sanding, applying rubbing compound and waxing the gelcoat
above the waterline. Around noon, our worker, Omar, got called
off our
boat to help take a mast off of another boat. Time for lunch
aboard
Mandolin.
We watched from Mandolin as the workers hooked a crane up to a mast
several boats away from us. Hmm, they're connecting some kind
of line
from the crane below the lower spreaders of the double spreader mast.
Looks like the crane is attached to the mast below its center of gravity.
As the crane lifted the mast out of the boat, the mast began to lean
a
little. The owner and a worker were standing at the bottom of
the mast,
perhaps helping to guide it out of the boat. The mast lifted
free of the
boat and then slowly swung from vertical towards horizontal.
This was not
part of the plan. As the mast neared horizontal, and swung toward
another
boat's rigging, it rotated and struck one of its spreaders on the crane.
With the support of its rigging compromised, The wooden mast then
proceeded to break in two near where the crane was attached.
What had
been nearly horizontal now broke in the middle and the two ends crashed
toward each other in opposite arcs down toward the deck of the boat
and
the men standing there. Amazingly and luckily, no one was hurt.
There
was enough rigging on the mast to still hold the two parts together
and
suspend them from the crane. Listening to and watching the wood
break
apart and then swing down out of control towards men and boats was
a
sickening experience. I became nauseous and bend over double.
It is
definitely one of the worst things I've ever seen.
Todd and I scampered down the ladder, put our shoes on and hurried over
to
make sure medical assistance wasn't needed. It wasn't.
We went back and
continued working on Mandolin.
About an hour later, Todd saw the guard, who had been sitting near our
boat, jump up and run away. When Todd looked in the direction
he ran, he
saw smoke rising from the deck of a trimaran. This trimaran has
been
having work done on it for the last several weeks. Soon he saw
the cloud
of a fire extinguisher. Next came the brooms to sweep away the
dust and
then came the paintbrushes to hide evidence of the fire. Have
we
mentioned you should always supervise work being done on your boat?
This
is an example of why.
Hey, the fun doesn't stop there. Not two minutes later, three
young
Mexican men on the sidewalk outside the boatyard behind Mandolin's
transom
were waving and trying to get Todd's attention. They asked if
he spoke
Spanish and then excitedly directed his attention to a four foot row
of
bushes that were on fire with about foot high flames. Yikes!
Out with
the hose to douse the flames.
Masts falling down, fire on two sides of Mandolin... Time to get
out of
the boatyard and back in the water where Mandolin belongs.
We woke up at 6:30 to wash and sand and solvent wash and tape, and then
barrier coat. We started barrier coating at 10:30am and finished
around
6:30pm. We have three more coats to do tomorrow. We need
to wait two
hours between coats, but have as long as sixteen hours before another
coat
must go on or else it's time for the dreaded sandpaper. I imagine
sanding
that could have been avoided being something like having tea with the
Wicked Witch of The West: "Hello, my pretty. Come and play
with my sand
paper." The appropriate cackle would then follow this remark.
Okay, tip for the day: Put two layers of tape at your waterline when
you
paint, or buy two-inch tape. We still went over the tape onto
the gelcoat
a few times even with this precaution.
Our friend's on Cutter Jones are out of town, so we are sleeping on
their
boat tonight as ours has toxic fumes. Cutter Jones has three
black cats
on their boat. If I weren't so tired, I'd be wondering if I'd
get any
sleep with these three playful monsters... We are wiped out.
Time for
bed so we can be up at 6am.
This afternoon, Todd napped on Cutter Jones while I went to town with
Anne. The ice cream was great, but I should have napped.
By 7pm I was
wiped out. We had a movie night on Anne's boat and finished watching
Horatio Hornblower.
We can't sand the barrier coat for 24 hours. Darn, a forced break
:)
Tomorrow afternoon we will be sanding and then applying our first coats
of
bottom paint. It's all down hill from here!
Our days have been starting out right with coffee and tea aboard Cutwater
with our friend Rick. This morning was no exception. He
just returned
from a short trip to the states and was able to pick us up two new
pairs
of sandals to replace the ones that were stolen. Mine fit great,
but
Todd's were a bit big. Luckily, our friend Anne was flying to
California
for a week and was willing and able to exchange them for us.
Sure is
great to have good friends.
At 1pm, the work began in earnest. We sanded the entire hull.
Happily,
the Interlux 2000 is easy to sand. Very similar to bottom paint.
We took
breaks from sanding to seal in our five thruhulls. Or rather,
in between
sealing thruhulls, I continued to sand. While Todd scraped and
sanded
away the excess sealant from the thruhulls, I mixed the bottom paint.
When I started bottom painting, Todd taped the waterline. It
was after
6pm by the time we started painting. The sun went down at 6:30pm.
By
using a worklight, we were able to finish painting the first coat over
the
entire hull and paint a second coat around the waterline by 8:15pm.
We
painted these first two coats green and this will become our bootstripe.
Tomorrow we will retape 4" down to paint two coats of blue bottom paint.
Halfway through all this work, in the late afternoon, I said to Todd,
"Well, I hate to say it, but I think you need to take me out to dinner
tonight." We thought we would be done by 7pm and had thoughts
of going
into town. We weren't done till after 8pm and were too wiped
out to even
consider town. There are three restaurants at this marina.
We decided to
try something new, so we went to the Italian restaurant. After
a too
expensive meal of fabulous food and good ambiance but zombyish company,
our sanity levels went way up.
The difficulty with retaping is that it is best for the bootstripe (the
stripe of paint just above the water) to be the same vertical distance
all
around the boat. However, the hull angle is more pronounced at
the bow
and stern than at the sides of a boat. The reason you want the
same
vertical distance all around is that when people look at the paint
straight on, it will look the same width. If you simply painted
the same
width paint all around the hull, the paint would appear to be thinner
where the hull angled more away from vertical. To get the same
vertical
distance where the hull goes in as well as down is tricky business.
First we had to find the right tool. We need to measure exactly
four
inched down and varying inches in towards the hull at exactly a 90-degree
angle. We needed an adjustable right angle. I could envision
the tool,
but didn't know if it existed. When I described it to Todd, he
said we
also needed a level. Funny carpenter levels usually aren't found
on boats
where almost nothing is level, square or symmetrical. Todd and
I had
vague notions that we might just have a right angle. Todd went
digging in
the tool compartment and came up with not only a right angle, but a
sliding right angle WITH a level. Hey, hey must be our lucky
day. That
was the easy part,
Then came marking the hull with this tool, a ruler and a pencil.
That was
the tedious part. Then came actually taping as straight as possible
for
both sides of a 34-foot boat. This was the difficult, major
concentration, and wow-my-eyes-really-hurt part. And just four
hours
later we were ready to paint. And after lunch, we did.
Compared to
epoxying, fairing and barrier coating, bottom painting is the candy.
Bottom paint goes on fairly easy and you know you're almost done with
your
tedious, awful bottom job.
While I went to the grocery store and bought $100.00USD worth of food
(I
shared a taxi with Rick), Todd cleaned, sanded, solvent washed, and
epoxied Mandolin's bilges. To say he was tired by 5pm is an
understatement. While Todd slept for two hours, I prepared food
for the
next several days and cooked a really good cauliflower potato curry
for
dinner, which we shared with Rick.
We had a bad scare today. Todd was lying on this back under Mandolin
grinding the last bit of gelcoat off the bottom of the keel.
He had put
plastic garbage bags between the blocks and the boat to keep the new
paint
from getting dinged. The 5" Makita grinder he was using snagged
one of
the plastic bags then ripped out of his hands. Fortunately it
was thrown
forward away from where he was laying before it hit the ground and
was
spinning out of control. The grinding disk is thin, sharp and
spinning at
10,000 RPMs would have no problem gouging its way deep into human flesh.
Luckily, Todd was able to roll and scramble away from the grinder and
then
unplug it without getting hurt. He was really spooked, though,
and
decided he was done with work for the day. While Todd napped,
I sanded
the areas where the pads had been. This was done the safe and
slow way by
hand with a piece of 80-grit sandpaper.
-Todd and Ellen
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