Last Frantic Push
It’s been a crazy week of last-minute pushes.
Originally, we thought we’d splash on Thursday. Elsa had other plans, and instead of floating at a peaceful anchorage, toasting our hard work, we spent Thursday putting blue tape next to one leak after another (while either creatively diverting the water or just putting down a bowl to catch it.)
Given how crazy our work pace has been since then, though, all with projects that really needed to be done before we splash? I have no idea how we’d have made that one work. It’s also been about a million degrees here, making it close to impossible to work in the heat. Thank goodness we have a pool to escape to!
Wednesday last week: prepping for Elsa, helping other people prep for Elsa. Also fitting the wind vane onto the rudder, drilling the holes for the vane fasteners, and working on the little tiller.
Thursday: Masking the rudder and vane for zinc spray on the metal parts. Then spending time on leak patrol. It rained from noon until we went to bed; highest wind we saw was 24.9 knots.
Friday dawned beautiful and sunny, but the humidity was crazy. Leak fixing began in earnest, which meant removing the starboard dorade box as well as the port side handrail, drilling out the holes and filling them with epoxy. I applied some more bottom paint and did the special paint on the transducer for speed and depth.
Saturday: Jeremy installed the knife rack (a pair of super strong strip magnets) in a boat-yoga-required location under the cockpit bridge deck, outboard and aft over the spice rack. He then got to work designing and templating a protective strip for the deck, for where the chain runs from the roller to the windlass.
Sunday we went to see a guy about a boat. (Did I mention we’re buying another BCC? No? Whoops. We are. More on that later.) And then there was more work on the protective strip, more cleaning of the area around the boat, more lists.
Monday (today!) was go go go from 7 am until about 8 when we finally took a shower. I put another full coat of bottom paint on while Jeremy built the rudder lock for the vane and filled in the old hawse holes for chain. He also built and tweaked the protective strip, though installation of that is happening tomorrow.
First template was paper. Second was cardboard. Real thing is king starboard.
Tuesday morning will involve yard clean up, a trip to storage to dump a lot of wood and line, installing that protective strip. Inaugurating the new windlass on the pile of chain that’s waiting under the bow. Test firing the dinghy outboard and hoping it works. Stowing things below.
And going for a ride in the slings.
Ahhhhh.
The next blog post will be from the water!