Fun! Fun! Fun!

SHIP'S LOG:

I had forgotten just how much fun working on a boat can be. Of course there are different kinds of work, some more fun than others. I had some of the fun kind Sunday when I was able to put the final coat of paint on ABISHAG's bottom. That wasn't the fun part, in fact it was a pain. Hot, sweaty, contorted. No, the fun work was ripping off the masking tape when the job was done!

If you scroll back to the blog last year about this time, you will find a wonderful discussion about "Zen and the paint along the waterline." Masking the waterline with tape can be a Zen-like experience as you are running the straight-edged tape along curved line to produce what appears to be a straight line. The fun part comes at the end when you get to peel the tape off in on long piece to reveal the "perfectly straight, sharp-edged" union of waterline and bottom paint that is the envy of all in the boatyard. It may not seem like a big deal if you have never done it after having gone through the nasty process of prepping and painting the bottom, but trust me, for the legion of people who have done so, it is a moment of great satisfaction and pride. It's Miller time!!!!

Monday, when I got down to the yard, I found that, true to their word, the fiberglass crew had the boat prepped for work. They even had the yard crew move the boat stands so that I could paint the spots that were covered before. When they said they were going to "jack the boat up,' they weren't whistling Dixie!. She was sitting on blocks and timbers a good 4 feet higher than she was before. My foldable ladder didn't reach and I had to board using the ladder and the boarding ladder at the stern. Unfortunately, all they did was jack the boat up. As far as I could tell, nothing else was done and nothing was done while I was there.

I spent Monday ripping out the LECTROSAN I had so carefully installed last year. The best thing I could say about the process was that I could do it. Unlike a number of other "installations" on the boat, this one came out with the same degree of easy as it went in. that should have rung a bell for me last year when I was putting it in! Still it took a couple of hours as the associated plumbing and electrical line had to go also, even those I hadn't installed. Again, it was a case of "working by feel and not by sight." You had to look and see what had to be done, then stick your hand(s) in and do the job by feel. Invariably, I dropped the wrench or screwdriver several times necessitating its semi-complicated retrieval before continuing with the job. This is what made the the relative simple job of disconnecting three cables( undoing 6 nuts) and two hoses (undoing 8 hose clamps) and lifting the unit out of the locker, while standing (sort of) in a hot, confined space, without being able to see what you are doing into a 2-2 1/2 hour project.

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

Near ABISHAG is a beastly large sailboat. I wasn't sure what it was only that it was a cruiser of some kind. It turned out to be a CT 54, a boat built in Taiwan and designed by Robert Perry. To say she is overbuilt is to dam with faint praise. About 25 - 30 years old, she was loaded with wood on the inside, beautiful to look at and maintenance intensive. She was a big, massive, built-for-comfort-not-of-speed type of craft. According to the owner, he has spent the last 8 years since he bought her, trying to get her back in shape and has just about completed the process. He will be heading to South Carolina in the Fall, specifically to Charleston, and when he gets there, he is going to use the boat as "an experience" for children with cancer from the Charleston area hospitals. The boat is large enough to take several, plus a parent, day sailing and to give the children the experience of what it is like to sail. They work the sail, helm the boat, learn to take sights and navigate, and have an experience they probably have never had. A heck of a guy! A heck of a sailor!