Sunday October 11, 2009

First, I took a couple of photos – of the hull and also from underneath the hull, of some of the underneath work I did last week and the week before. This is mid-way in the work we did today.

We (David & I) worked on the boat for about an hour this afternoon. I mixed batch after batch (probably 5?) of epoxy, while David used a roller to lay the epoxy mix on the outside hull panels. I’m a little concerned about how cold it was, and the effect on the mixed epoxy, but David seemed fairly confident that it will set okay. As a precaution, we brought the epoxy containers home to keep them in the apartment rather than in the unheated garage a friend (Ben) is letting me use to work on the boat.

Since Ben’s garage, where we’re working, is unheated, I think we’re just on the cusp of it being too cold to do much more work involving epoxy or paint, etc. David’s suggestion is that we try to put one more coat of epoxy on the outside of the hull. Let that dry. Flip the boat over and put at least one, preferably 2 coats of epoxy on the inside. Then bring the boat home, park it on the trailer in our apartment building parking lot, cover it well and leave it for the winter. (We both think it would be good to move the boat out of Ben’s garage for the winter, so the garage is available to his family, and then maybe borrow the space again next spring for a couple of weeks.)

We can then keep working over the winter on the other parts that need to be finished – the mast, the boom, the dagger board, the rudder, the sprit spar and so on. Some need to be epoxied – like the 2 pieces to the mast – all need sanding and finishing, probably varnish for most except the bottom of the rudder and dagger boards. But all of that work can be done in the basement of our apartment building, which is warm enough (just not big enough for the whole boat-shaped-object to get in and out of, which we learned the hard way, having carried the hull from the parking lot to the basement entrance and tried unsuccessfully to get the hull through: 57-1/2 inches will not fit through a 56 inch opening, in case anyone was wondering about that).

So, although I love crisp fall weather, I am now keeping my fingers crossed for warm days for the next 2 weeks.