Dispatches from the Boatyard #6
Another 2 weeks just snuck by. There has been sanding and fairing and sanding going on.
On the 22nd, we expected a visit from our eldest son and his girlfriend but that didn't happen until later. Something about leaving passports behind or something.
So we sanded some more. Calla Lily's deck paint was in dire shape, and the house paint that was covering much of her was a poor substitute for proper "topside paint" as it is known in yacht land. Before we can repaint her, we have to sand off the old stuff (what we are doing now,) fair, sand, fair, sand, prime, sand, prime, and sand again. There's about 400 square feet of deck with lots of inside corners and irregular levels which make it a faffy, faffy job. Each subsequent sanding pass is easier than the last one because the surface gets evened out and smoother.
Friday the 23rd, Shelby didn't feel well and stayed home to rest. Mike vacuumed the deck and then got into dentist mode with the dremel opening up cracks in the paint so that we could fill them with fairing compound. Bigger holes were filled with thickened epoxy.
Saturday, we drove to Tucson to see our oldest son and his girlfriend and to pick up supplies. We also surprised one of our dear friends by showing up at her birthday party at Dante's Fire, one of our favorite restaurants. Mike saw a movie called Bullet Train which is a fun film and we had dinner at Jun Dynasty. (This is beginning to sound like an old-school Facebook post...) Monday, we drove back to Puerto Penasco with Tanner's girlfriend Lauren. Tuesday, was more hole filling. Wednesday, we washed the boat from top to bottom to get her ready for fairing and for the yard people to start sanding the bottom. Thursday was really smoky from the landfill which was lit on fire.
Fairing is a very messy job, especially if you are Mike. Shelby is a much neater fairing compound applicator. Fairing is similar to doing drywall mud except that the paste is much more complicated and thicker. The fairing compound is epoxy based which means that is very expensive, requires mixing 2 components, only last about 15 minutes in the heat before it gets too hard to spread, and is very difficult to clean up. It's as much fun to do as it sounds like.
We faired all day Friday and got it mostly done. Shelby taught Mike how be a less messy fairing applicator. Emphasis on the less messy. Our daughter was scheduled for hip surgery on Tuesday, so Shelby drove up Saturday to help her get ready. Mike sanded his morning away and Tanner spent a couple fun-filled hours at the top of the mast installing a new VHF antenna and routing the cable through the mast conduit. We are looking forward to having much more range on our VHF radio and AIS transceiver. Mike rode back with Tanner and we had some family fun before Channing's surgery.
Mike is back on the boat in solo mode sanding, sanding, and finishing the fairing.
