Means of Seeing what the eye brings

Sailing back from Smuggler’s this afternoon, i was pleasantly surprised to find the 1928 Fife ketch “Sincerity” in the harbour. What fun!

It’s been a few weeks now of very sporadic internet acccess. Just this afternoon, i’ve been loaned a wifi card, and now, if i perch the computer just right on the pile of Aries spare on the cabintop, i can get onto an unsecured network in a friend’s apartment across the harbour.
My folks have been here visiting for a couple weeks; just left to return to Canada on Friday. Naturally, playing host has cut into boat-fixer-uppering time, but still worth it. Now that they’re off and away, it’s time to get the nose back to the grindstone!
i’ve bought Centaurea a nice little motor (a Universal 18) to replace the hulking rusty Perkins 4-107. Interior work has been progressing; i’m slowly getting through removing, re-bedding, and re-installing the cabin window drip rails, removing the funky fake ceiling strips from turn of the bilge, and generally countersinking & epoxying every chip, ding, and unused screw hole in the inside fiberglass.
Outside, i’ve started in on rebuilding the main sliding hatch, hatch garage, and dodger coaming. Helping with this work is the addition of a whacking Sunbrella awning over the boat; keeps the rain out of the screw holes, and the sun off of me!

Got into the hull this weekend… Being a one-time hurricane write-off, i knew there were repairs to be checked out. After sounding the hull with a hammer, it looked like there was only one area that was showing any cause for concern. The whole bottom had been barrier-coated and bottom-painted, but on the starboard side of the deadwood some of the bottom paint was looking a little crackly, so i suited up and ground off all the paint with a 40-grit softpad.
Having done this on cars and boats before, i wasn’t too shocked to see the usual multi-coloured patchwork of fillers, fairing compound, and patches. After all the paint was off, i dug further with a chisel, chipping off any areas of filler that looked at all loose. There are plenty of dents that were filled, and my impression is that a few were not sanded or prepped well enough before being filled/faired. There are only a handful of spots where damage actually got into the core; the core in these areas was repaired well enough, but the fill and fibreglass mish-mash they used to fair out the damaged outer skin in these ares was too dry. i think this must have been from a single batch of poorly-mixed epoxy; the questionable area covers about one batch’s worth of goop.
The dents can just be froperly faired; the skin is still intact, and the underlaying core foam is solid with no signs of delamination. The fill areas over the patched holes will need amore serious treatment: i’ll grind them back a little more, tapering them into the surrounding skin, then apply a few layers of ‘glass patches to assure outer skin integrity.

Gillian has just pointed out to me that putting little dashes in the front of every sentence
– like this one here
does not actually make my emails any shorter. i’m blaming yahoo for their ridiculous tiny box in which you compose email; it’s dang hard to tell just how much blather you’ve horked onto the cathode-ray page until after you either
– hit the “preview” button, or
– get the mail sent back to you as part of a reply.

Or maybe i ought to blame myself. Shit, you have no idea what this looks like unedited, do you (guffaw, guffaw, guffaw)