Hatches, I've Got Your Hatches Right Here

The installation of the newly refurnished and revitalized hatches has begun in earnest. Boy oh boy does having shiny hatches make a difference. The refurbishment project was undertaken in an attempt to protect the frames from deterioration but is it okay to just be a bit shallow and admit that the fact they look beautiful makes me happy?

The fact that they are being installed on a freshly painted cabin top helps with the aesthetic appeal. The down side to this is that there is still painting to be done on the deck and bow so what we have now is a shiny cabin top which makes the rest of the decks look really, really tired. This means more taping (which takes a lot longer than you would think), more painting (again with the time sink) and yet more polishing and waxing of said paint. 

It is my secret fear that all of this obsessive spit and polish will result in a deck so slippery that we end up shooting crew members off the side of the boat like penguins on an iceberg,

 Oxidized paint is ugly but its also grippy. I do think we will be revisiting the nonskid sooner rather than later as with the rest of the deck so pristine and slick, I want the nonskid areas to REALLY be nonskid. 

The good news is that either way, the cabin top is just about ready to have the turtle shell and deck hardware installed and that is another milestone to tick off our list.

Meanwhile, Kitty likes to check up on the progress and tell us what she thinks of the work thus far. She also likes to provide commentary on her dad. She will proudly tell you that her daddy "is a worker". She holds workers in high esteem whether they be her family, or boat yard workers, road construction crews basically anyone who uses a tool in their daily work is a "worker" and she holds them in very high regard. Anytime she has a toy or household item which is damaged, she brushes it off and says it's okay because "Daddy can fix it, He is a good fixer. he can fix anything." Now to help her see that SHE can be a worker who fixes things too.

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...

I Was Told There Would Be Beaches And Sunsets.

I never wanted to write a refit blog. What I wanted was a travel blog. A place to write about all the amazing places we were seeing. A place to keep all of those happy memories intact so that we could look back over them in years to come and remember where we had been. The colossal mistakes I made in executing this plan was A: buying a boat to travel on and B: buying a boat with my darling, perfectionist, Type A engineer Captain. Until this fall, a refit blog it is. Le sigh.

Work continues on the front cabin. If you recall, this wasn't going to be on our to do list as we hired a shipwright to do the work. The shipwright was a very charming, affable guy who unfortunately did not possess the necessary skill needed to fit out the cabin to our standards (granted, we KNOW we are picky) nor did he seem interested in doing things in a cost effective manner. Lesson learned. If you want something done right, have Mark do it. Just try not to look too closely at the calendar.

Mark has been finishing out the cabinetry in the front cabin. We had seen a couple of sisterships who removed the cramped, front head to open up the cabin but it seems no one else took the time to or spent the money to improve the functionality by increasing the storage and providing a secure place to sit while underway. We needed more storage, a place to sit to while getting dressed and most of all, a beautiful finish. We are well on our way. The cabinetry work is just about done and soon, very soon it will be time to insulate the cabin roof and install the headliner. Then it will be my turn to have a go at the soft goods to turn the cabin into something worthy of a couple who has lavished care, love, blood, sweat and a whole lot of tears on a little boat.

When you are working with teak, there is a level of anxiety that comes anytime you fire up a power tool or take a planer in hand that you just do not get when working with another wood. Teak is incredibly expensive, a diminishing resource and can behave in unexpected ways. Given this, you can maybe understand why Mark was so very chuffed to have perfectly cut, routed and shaped this piece of molding-

I know, I know. It's a piece of wood and not a sunset on a beach. Sometimes, you have to take the happy where you find it. We were similarly excited about...wood when Mark managed to nail the construction of the fiddle around shelf here.

Sitting on the work bench, it doesn't look like much but once you see it all coming together...

Then you start to think, maybe a refit blog isn't quite so bad after all. Beaches and sunsets are beautiful but you know what? My front cabin is starting to be pretty darned beautiful too.