Fishermen, Moisture Meters And Other Liars

Fishermen are known to be great liars. Its not widely known, but moisture meters are also great liars. They will tell you that there is only one small area of wet deck core but once you take the time to fix that one small area, you will discover other  small areas (all under deck hardware) that are wet and need attention. By attention I mean recoring and recoring is a pain in the butt. Anyone who tells you otherwise is also a great liar.

As part of the deck hardware redesign project, the old winches, organizers and clutches have been removed. Once these were removed,  we found wet areas of deck core under them so...remove old core, cut and install dry balsa. Sounds easy until you factor in the hardeners that don't want to play nice so we get to to remove and repeat. Finally get it to a workable state, then pull out those power tools and fair, fair, fair. Soon enough it will be time to start vacuum bagging which sounds straightforward until you remember this is all on the deck, which is the ceiling of the cabin and gravity is always on. Now add in the fact that this is a project lead by Captain Perfecto and so there is no "good enough", it has to be completed to a finish better than new and you see why I say recoring is a pain in the butt. Hopefully soon we have a perfectly dry and sound deck ready to accept the deck hardware. I will tell you that there will be LIBERAL use of butyl tape on all the insertion points so we never have to do this again.

The girls cabin looks like a haunted house right now. Or a work space draped in plastic to keep the dust down. Same thing.

Let me remind you all that we did not buy a project boat. Ours just needed a "little"bit of work. I say this because just today someone was asking whether or not they should take on a boat that the sellers have deemed a "project" boat. If a seller is calling it a project, run screaming in the other direction.

On a happier note, the front cabin now has an installed hand rail and cabinetry on the port side where once there was a cramped head.

Want to make Captain Perfecto's eye twitch? Point out that you can see the teak bungs covering the screws. He spent more time than you can imagine trying to get the grain to match perfectly so they would disappear. It confounds him that they are visible. I told him they were almost decorative and hey, its just craftsmanship on display. I have yet to convince him but he has accepted it somewhat due to other pressing projects.

Visible bungs or not, we have more storage and I LOVE storage.

As Mark was fighting with the fairing of the deck recore, I was washing the boat. It is becoming apparent that it's time to think about having the hull painted. The Awlgrip is just past its prime and is nearing the end of its life and dying a slow, chalky death. While trying to get the boat clean I had a couple of thoughts. One- Awlgrip is crap and I don't know why anyone even bothers with it. Two, even though painting the boat is definitely NOT something we need to do and its on the spendy side of things after all the time and money lavished on Ceol Mor, it would just make me happy to have the hull as beautiful as the interior. Gilding the lily? Yes but at this point why the heck not? It's only money (HA!) and since we have not been bleeding money but have apparently severed a major monetary artery what's a paint job and new canvas really? So I am looking at Awlcraft 2000 color charts and trying to convince Mark that new canvas and hull paint is justified after the huge amount of work that has been done. Stay tuned...

A Little Work Here, A Little Work There

It would be nice to just move from one area of the boat to another, but that's too simple, straight forward and linear. If we have learned anything its that nothing to do withe boats is straight forward and linear. You throw a boat into the equation and you get thrown in many directions at once. So it is with the refit. You get ready to complete a project and then you realize that you are at the mercy of shipping times for necessary equipment so while you wait on delivery, its best to move to another project rather than waste time.

Kitty still loves to "help" Give her tools, any tools and she will happily play for hours

One of the bigger projects is redoing the deck hardware layout. For some reason, a PO thought it would be fun to change up the layout so that every time you need to hoist or tweak a sail. it was an difficult as possible. Perhaps they wanted to make it hard in order to save money on a gym membership but it has not been working for us. The goal all along has been for each of us to be able to single hand the boat. I am a mighty girl RAWR! but not quite that mighty. For this to happen, I need a bit more assistance from our winches and a little less chafe on the sheets.

Armed with his CAD software, hardware catalogs and the original boat design drawings, Mark has been carefully mapping out the deck layout. First up was figuring out the new deck organizers.

 Originally after much research, Mark had really wanted to use Spinlock organizers and clutches so he emailed Spinlock to get more technical information and sizing information. The guy at Spinlock emailed Mark back and instead of answering his questions said " this is over specced for your boat". This REALLY annoyed Mark. Not only did Spinlock not answer his question but the one thing you do not do is tell an engineer that his carefully made choices are wrong. Oh Spinlock, have you not realized that EVERYTHING on our boat is overspecced? So, Mark made a solemn vow to have no Spinlock equipment what so ever on our boat because yeah, it annoyed him and an annoyed Mark can hold a grudge like you would not believe. Bye bye Spinlock, hello Antal, Selden and Lewmar.

We still can not understand why the PO removed the 55 winches specced by Bob Perry for genoa/jib sheets and replaced them with 44s and then really undersized the main sheet winches but this is being rectified. The 44s are being repurposed for the mains and we have shiny new Lewmar 55s on their way. These will be installed once we get the deck under the winches recored.

 That's right, another instance of the infallibility of moisture meters and more cursing at the PO for not bedding the hardware properly in the first place. If you are going to be bedding hardware, please please for the love of future refitters check out this how to from Compass Marine . Do it. Buy some butyl tape from them. Use it. Yes, it does matter because while soft spots can be recored, its a major pain in the butt to do it correctly and you can save yourself from curses being thrown at you from a future owner, a man up to his elbows in balsa and fiberglass.

While we wait for delivery of equipment, Mark milled a new hand rail for the front cabin. We laughingly call this turning dollars to dust because yeah, teak. Not cheap but functional, sturdy, perfectly sized and aesthetically beautiful. No sense in half measures when we have spent so much time and effort on the front cabin. If you want it done right, have Mark do it.

Some see a pile of sawdust, boat owners see money blowing in the wind.

Here's hoping we can get the all the equipment delivered  installed before it becomes unbearably hot around here. Working on the decks in July and August is cruel and unusual punishment so fingers crossed the rest of the shiny bits get here soon, the recoring (thankfully a small area) is straight forward and we can keep on keeping on.

You Say "Tomato" and I Say "Tomato"....Yeah, it kinda loses something written out

This weekend was all about pushing forward on the master cabin ourselves in an attempt to mitigate the financial hemorrhage caused by trying to hire the work out. Yes, we should be finishing up plumbing but that can wait as the unfinished cabin is so right in our faces so we have to get it done so we can put this debacle behind us.

Mark carefully made templates of the cabinetry so that he could cut the teak staves and install them. My job was much less sexy and despite my pleas to be allowed to use power tools, Mark relegated me to the relatively safe task of cutting what seemed like a thousand pieces of tape to mark the pieces in the order in which they needed to be installed. Gummy scissors are a pain the patookus and it seemed that every five cuts, the silly blades would gum up and require cleaning. I do not think a Sawzall would have been stymied by a tiny little thing like tape but my pleas to be given more power to accomplish the job fell on deaf ears.

While Mark was cutting staves, he stopped long enough to tell me his numbering plan. If you have been reading the blog, you know where this is going. I listened intently, expecting him to tell me that each piece of cabinetry would be given a single letter designation for the group and then numbered individually. That is how I would have done it.

It was at this moment that Mark's Left Brain kicked in while my Right Brain was wondering why on Earth he was making this more difficult than it had to be. It was also at this time that I realized while we both ostensibly spoke English, in reality we have only some vocabulary in common. We speak completely different languages.

Mark asked me to identify each group with a single letter- C for cabinet, D for Drawers and S for sides. He then further asked me to identify each stave over the large letter with a number 1,2, 3 and to further identify the top, middle and bottom of each piece with an A, B, C. Okay, I got this. I happily began marking tape on the staves confident that for once I kind of knew what he wanted and would be able to move things along more quickly.

Things were going well, until I came to the side cabinet template. This particular piece started with a piece that was at waist height as opposed to the one I had done previously which started at the cabin top. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Why, I am marking the tape as you requested" I replied cheerfully. He shook his head "No, No, you've put an A at the top of this piece!" he exclaimed. "Yes, its the top of the piece and the top pieces are A" I said innocently. "No, the A designation is for the first piece in the series. What would make you think it should be an A?" he quizzed. "I thought the A was for the roof line" I responded. "No, the middle length is the first piece and should be A". Okay, whatever I thought. As he went back to cutting more staves, I thought to myself "Self, I have no idea why A is now at the mid line of the wall but so be it. That means B is at the bottom which would make C the cabin top. I don't get it but its his project" and I continued to mark the staves.

Mark came over and took a peek "Why have you put a C here?!?!?!" he asked. "WHY!! What letter do you think should go here?". I could see his lips moving and I could hear what I thought were words I recognized. I had the realization that he is from Left Brania where nothing makes sense to anyone but other Left Brainia citizens and I am from Right Brain Land where nothing is perfect but everyone is pretty cheerful in their mess. I smiled a wide smile at him as he repeated his question "What letter should go here?" "Well" I replied "you could have a K for kiss my... or if that is not to your liking how about an F...".

We did manage to get the pieces all labeled and numbered. Mark managed to get the pieces installed. We learned that some things really are lost in translation. We learned that we should never do projects together where Mark comes up with a clever numbering scheme for me to follow. Most importantly, we were reminded that even though we speak different languages we still really like each other. So much so that we are compiling conversational Left Brain and Right Brain guides for each other. Coming soon to a bookstore near you...

Well THAT turned out well.

Aww look! Its a new noxious chemical to play with.

I have to giggle ruefully when folks email us to tell us that what we should do is pay someone to work on the boat for us. I've gotten several emails from people who are of the opinion that we haven't cast off the dock lines yet because we are DIYing it when the obvious answer is to just throw money at someone to do it for us. Oh, oh how sweet and naive they are. As I read their emails, I imagine them with bright and shining faces full of trust and hope. I also imagine the only work they've had done thus far is to have their bottom painted by yard staff or to have a rigger out to rig their boats. Oh how adorable you are, you cute little salty sailor who thinks a refit means installing new electronics and slapping on bottom paint.

Bottom paint, rigging and electronics do not a refit make. Rebuilding the boat basically from the keel up does. Okay, so maybe I am indulging in a bit of hyperbole but we are in the process if redoing every single system on the boat so it feels at time as if we are completely rebuilding. We have put aesthetic projects at the bottom of the list as we work our way down our punch list- soft deck repaired, chainplates, chainplate bulkheads, all port lights and hatches and surrounding deck repaired, all wiring, plumbing, engine mounts, deck hardware, rigging- both standing and running,  refrigeration, air conditioning, water maker, navigation equipment, communication equipment and sailsyou can see why we moved the aesthetic items of a master cabin remodel, galley refit and head remodel at the bottom of the list. Now about that master cabin remodel...

I long thought our boat would function much better with the forward head ripped out. After a few nights on the hook, Mark agreed it would make life much better but since he already had an enormous work load on the boat (see above), we decided to put it off until further on down the road. When we had a friend recommend a boat wright who was available, supposedly had the necessary skill set and was keen to go to work we decided to bite the bullet and have the work on the forward cabin done thinking it would move things along for us. This turned out to be a very expensive mistake.

While the boat wright we hired is talented at some woodworking (he can make beautiful dinghies), cabinet making and time management are maybe not his strong suit. After observing the work of the boat wright for a bit, Mark realized he needed to be on hand to carefully supervise the boat wright to keep him on task, from embellishing on the design and moving forward. This means a lot less time to work on his own list. Mark had a couple of trips out of the country for work that slowed things down and when he got back, the boat wright had a slew of issues that popped up that prevented him from working on our boat.

After many months of fits and starts, the head had been removed, the teak paneling removed, the floor leveled and the frames for the cabinetry installed. This constitutes about 30% of the work required and yet due to a tendency to work at a glacial pace, our boat wright had burned through 75% of the budget. Just a wee bit shy of $8000. That is a LOT of cheese. Mark and I both had a sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs. Then there were the little issues. It pained us that it did not seem to bother our help that his tendency to drop tools where ever was gouging our teak and holly sole. The teak paneling was subject to a bit of abuse as well. We understand that bumps and accidents happen and interiors get banged up, but it shouldn't happen when the boat is tied to the dock and is a result of carelessness. The breaking point for Mark was a missing drill and broken light that the boat wright never bothered to mention.  Every one has a breaking point and its usually a tiny thing that pushes someone over the edge and this was it. So, we fired him.

It was not an easy decision to make. Firstly, the boat wright is an intensely likable person. He's very affable and we wanted to give him the work as he intimated at the outset that he needed employment. Secondly, we never would have begun this project if we knew we would have to finish it ourselves. We have other more pressing things to deal with. Ugh. Just UGH! To say we are disappointed would be a huge understatement.

There is a bit of light through the clouds though. We hired another boat wright to build a teak and holly sole piece for the front cabin  and to make the teak paneling staves. It was not cheap, but it was done on time and with a very high level of craftsmanship. Beautifully made, geometerically spot on and color matching was done very well too. No complaints here. Nothing but praise (Larry from Superior Marine) so I am reassured that its not case of us never being happy. Just wish we had hired Larry from the get go. We are licking our wounds for a little bit, but we might hire out some more work to him. We just need a little bit of time to stop the dizzying, vomitous feeling of a project going crazy and waaay over budget before we decide.

So if you feel inclined to email me and tell me how all my problems would be solved if only I would hire someone unless it is carries a big fat money transfer to my bank I will redirect you to this post.

Battling fumes for me, my hero wears a respirator. <3

Now let's be positive for a moment, shall we? The interior bulkhead between the master cabin and the salon was cracked and had a 1/4 inch gap. Mark was convinced that this would be a huge issue and the repair would not be perfect. He was also flummoxed by the way in which this defect throw off the geometry and prevent him from installing the teak paneling. I knew it would be okay. Captain Perfecto has MAD skills. Yes, it took a bit of extra effort, a new jig, a lot of fiberglass repair and a whole bunch of routering but it is looking really, really good. If only I could clone him...