A day later, I went back to finish my goop job; I screwed on the bases of my bow lights, and shoved the wires down the hole before putting the light on and completing the installation.

But when I pushed the wires on the second light through, the stopped early….and came back up with the ends covered in white goo. I obviously was only 50% successful with my wire-string-rope gadgets to clean the goop out of the holes. I wasn’t too surprised because I did pull that one through before I intended to. And then when I tightened the screws holding the teak block all the way down and watched the goop squeeze out all around I suspected that this was happening.

So today I got out a wire probe an forced it though…then forced a string through, then tied another little bit of dead rope to the string, and went below and pulled it through, cleaning out the excess goop. It was quick, and I didn’t leave a path of goo in my bedroom. And only a few minutes later, the second bow light was screwed in.

Before I cleaned out the goo, I went back to my used glove box, and found two pairs I had used lightly while installing the teak blocks. Now that I’m done, I think one will survive for yet another day…but the other two probably have too much goop on them to be usable when it kicks. I’ll find out later.

But when I talk of goop winning a battle, I am not speaking correctly. I am actually directing away from my point. The (up-to-now unstated) follow-on sentence is about me winning the war against the goop, but I just can’t say that. Because I’m not in a war with the goop. The goop is on my side, although it can be a sticky partner. I do look for the humor or entertainment in my struggles with partners like this, but there is no battle here, nor is there a war. And I do occasionally struggle, but I am enjoying the work. If I struggle, I am usually learning more and I like that too.

In truth, I don’t feel like I’m working against any part of Flutterby. Instead, I’m lovingly working on turning her into the boat of my dreams. The one I will sail on. When I’m at sea, I trust that she will take loving care of me when I need protection from the elements. Because somehow, I believe she will be returning to me all that I’m putting into her here on land. Most of what I do is to make sure she is seaworthy and sound. But not all. Some things I do are simply because they make her feel like a more wonderful boat to me. Or perhaps just because I love her.

Today I did something on my todo list that was big enough that it definitely counts as real progress. I did quite a bit of work in the last few days, and even did some of it before we left the boat back in July. But I’ll get to that later.

You see, today was really about the gloves. Boat projects are full of nasty chemicals. Often breathing them is a bad idea, so I wear a respirator, but today I was outside and it was too hot anyways. Also, I believe it is possible to absorb some of them through your skin, and even if that doesn’t happen, they can be difficult to clean off. Thus the gloves.

Flutterby has surely consumed 10 boxes of disposable gloves by now. Our favorites are the blue nitrile rubber ones from Harbor Freight. They are sized, and fortunately, the same size (Medium) fits both of us. Most other brands are one-size-fits-almost-everybody-but-not-very-well. They are thinner and blow out very quickly. The Harbor Freight gloves work well, fit well, and cost about $10 for a box of 100 gloves. We’ve been ordering three boxes at a time lately.

But you see, I’m frugal. Even though they are disposable, they can often survive the job without too much damage–maybe just a little dried paint, or some sweat stains. Those could still protect my hands another day. Other times they are too messy, or get holes. Those finally get thrown away. Sometimes after a nasty job, I clean up the tools with solvent or vinegar. If I keep wearing the gloves during cleanup, as a side effect, I end up with a couple “washed” gloves. I’ve also taken an idea from the medical profession, and I usually put on two pairs at once, and just keep changing the outside ones. The inside pair usually stays pretty clean So we have a box of “used” gloves, waiting for the next job.

Today I got out the 3M 101 and put down two blocks of teak that are both the front of our cap rail and a mounting space for our bow lights. I screwed them down, then re-installed the chocks which separated this piece of toe rail from the piece aft. It sounds simple when I say it like this. But that doesn’t explain the gloves either.

This job went as well as could be expected. It took me 10 minutes to open up the (partially used) tube of 101 enough that I could operate the caulk gun. Then once I put the goop down it started getting all over. I had masked the teak blocks and the deck. But of course, I didn’t do quite enough masking. By this time I had thrown three or four gloves overboard due to blowouts or too much goop. Then the screws didn’t seem to be going into the pre-drilled holes. For a long time. Then I picked up the block and dug around in the goop underneath. And threw some more gloves overboard. And a gooey rag too. Finally I got the screws going where they belonged and tightened them down.

Then I put the chock down and screwed it in (That was easy!).

Now I repeat the process on the starboard side. It went about the same, except that I had so much trouble starting the screws that I actually climbed down below, opened up my ladder and worked on it from the side, trying not to look into the setting sun. By this time, both the mosquitos and the ferrel cats want me to feed them. I don’t have a choice with the mosquitos, but the cats will wait a little longer.

I didn’t describe the next step on the first side. I’ve got an odd crooked hole that goes through the deck and the board to allow the bow light’s wire down below. I was afraid that I would get this hole filled with 101 and be unable to install the wires later. So I tied together a short piece of heavy wire and a the core from some dead rope with a little string. I stuffed the rope into the wood block, and left the wire dangling. As I was putting the gooped block onto the deck, I threaded the wire through and let dangle inside the anchor locker. (Yup, another glove goes overboard!) Once I had the block screwed in and (I hope) just about all the goop squeezed into position I went inside the boat, trying not to goop the boat and crawled into the anchor locker, and tried to find my little wires to pull them through. Then I tried to carry this goopy mess outside without making a mess on my bed or the rest of the boat.

Finally I was almost done. I then started cleaning up extra 101 that had squirted out all over the place. I used a rag and mineral spirits to try and remove it from the teak. I threw more rags overboard. Probably a glove too. By this time I had killed all the “used” gloves and was getting new ones.

The last thing was to re-use a couple more gloves. I tie them over the 101 cartridge to keep the goo inside and (hopefully) keep the air out and prevent it from kicking off before I can use it.

Finally I can check something off. And now I can feed the cats too.

We’ve been working with epoxy for quite a while now.  Meps probably wrote describing some of the messes it can make.  But today’s repair was one of our biggest messes so far. Actually, the word we used to describe it today was considerably less nice than “mess.”

Sure, epoxy is sticky stuff and gets on a lot of things. Sure, many jobs are best done applying it with a (rubber gloved) finger, which means eventually all fingers, and as a result, all tools, are covered with gooey epoxy. We’ve gotten used to that.

Today we started with a normal job — reshaping a porthole opening. Our new bronze portlights don’t quite match either the previous plastic ones, badly installed by the prior boat owner, or the ones put in by the factory decades ago. The resulting hole is too big in some places, too small in others, and has voids and ugly old screw holes. After grinding out bad stuff, we fill the holes with thickened epoxy, then screw in a wooden mold and add more epoxy around that, making a near-perfect shape for the new port.

This went pretty much as expected, but it was the 6th portlight we had repaired that way, and we had the drill down.  The next job was one we had only done once before.  It also involved more yelling and excitement the last time, so we didn’t expect it to be easy or straightforward this time either.

You can’t see it, and neither can we, but there is a void in our boat, between the cabin sides and cabin top. There was a piece of teak trim along this line, which functioned as a sort of eyebrow above the portlights. It was mounted with a lot of screws, which failed and allowed water intrusion. When we drilled them out, we found that many were connected via long void channels. So much for the squirt-a-little-thickened-epoxy-with-a-syringe solution…

So on the night of our big mess, we made a bigger batch of epoxy than usual and thickened it with Cab-o-Sil. Using a plastic spoon, a spatula, and our fingers, we started filling an empty caulking gun tube this messy goo. The batch was big enough to start heating up from the chemical reaction of kicking, warning us we have to move fast. Then we fought with the plunger and the caulk gun. By now, there was enough epoxy on everything that changing gloves was pointless.

And then the fun begins. It’s dusk as we go outside. I insert the end into a hole, as tight as I could, with a rubber adapter that fits the hole snugly. With a finger on my free hand, I plug the next hole. Meps is holding fingers over three or four, maybe even five more holes. I start squeezing the trigger, trying to force the goo a distance of about three feet, with holes every eight inches or so.

At a recent trip to Lowe’s (the hardware store, not the grocery), we got one of the better caulking guns, and it has twice as much leverage as a cheap one — lots of oomph! But this same pressure is now against our fingers, which don’t exactly fit the holes. As I force epoxy past Meps’ fingers, she starts hollering, “I can’t hold on!” and the pressure is rising at the earlier fingers. Two of them squirt out about a quarter cup of epoxy, but it hasn’t hit the end of the line yet.  I keep squirting, we both keep pushing, and she keeps fussing. Finally it gets through the void and comes out the last hole.

As fast as possible, I remove the gun, flailing about for a safe place to put it that won’t leave epoxy all over the deck. Meanwhile, another quarter cup squirts out the entrance hole. Meps is frantically trying to cover more holes with all her fingers, like playing an oversized gooey flute.

I grab for the tape, to cover the holes, but our gloves are too slimed by epoxy to find the end of it.

When we go down below to mix our second batch of epoxy, I notice the worst part. There is a blowout in the main cabin — behind a wooden trim piece, a hole went into the same void I was filling. Now, as Meps mixes up the next batch of epoxy, I see a huge white blob of epoxy spurting from behind the trim and oozing down the side of the cabin. Ack!

It was completely dark by the time we finished emptying three caulking tubes into the void. We used a half gallon of vinegar to clean up tools, like the wrench, the screwdriver, the box cutter I had to use to find the end of the tape, and the droplight we weren’t expecting to need. The caulk gun alone took a half hour, and the blowout inside took even longer. We also had to clean epoxy off a hatch, the deck, the toe rail, and the cabin side. As a result, we spent longer on cleanup than we did on the job itself — just as necessary, but a lot less rewarding.

For most people, the daily grind is metaphorical, but it hasn’t been for us the last week.

Instead, we have been working on fixing up the deck’s many holes, some of which were letting water (and then rot) into the balsa core. There are one or two that have grown well beyond a little rot around a hole and instead became big areas to patch. Having done this already in the forward portion of the boat, we were relatively old hands, and one lesson I had learned was that cleanup is a big job, so why not make a big HUGE mess all at once, then just do the cleanup once.

I think this was a good choice, but we sure did make a mess of the boat by now. As I write this, we just have to sweep and vacuum up all the dust, and then we can start putting some things back together. With any luck, it will never get to be quite this big a mess inside again!

I suspect that besides the normal sort of lack of energy to start big projects when returning from our Burning Man vacation trip, the expectation of what we would turn our home into was what kept us from starting this project–it wasn’t until a week later that we actually started removing the last hardware and grinding stuff!

And, if you wondered, no, not every place that needed to be ground out was easy to get into…

Just the same, somehow we managed to get at them all.

You know how it goes….it is supposed to be a simple, easy project.

I stopped to ask Kenny about marine “goop” compounds, so I can pick the right one when we install our new forward hatch.  After he answered, he asked if we were ready to be moved and have the boat lowered.

Ack!

I said something like “Uhm, it will take a couple days, since we haven’t done anything to put new bottom paint on the centerboard and trunk yet…”

By this time, we had already finished a bunch of boat projects, and weren’t starting many new ones — we were trying to figure out our plans for Burning Man instead.  All we had left was removing some leaking hardware and plugging the holes with goop, installing the new hatch, putting a cover over the hole where the main mast will go….and probably a couple other jobs I’ve since forgotten.

So this sounded pretty easy — just pick out some bottom paint, scrape the centerboard and trunk clean of mollusks, do a quick scuff sand, and slap on the bottom paint.  Of course, picking the bottom paint was an agonizing decision that took forever, but that was OK, ’cause we were doing other stuff in the meantime.

First off, we didn’t have the right sander for the job. The best and fastest tool would probably be a big 7″ or 8″ right angle grinder, but it just seems too big to keep on our boat. Instead, I drove Margaret nuts shopping for the perfect 5″ random orbit sander…after checking every store in town and combing the internet, we decided to order one online and pay for expedited shipping.

Then we had to haul the centerboard up so we could get better access to the trunk (from below).  Normally that wouldn’t be a big job, but we have a ballasted centerboard that weighs between 1000 and 2000 pounds. With the built-in purchase and one of the winches it goes up with a bit of a grunt.  But the deck was sagging under the weight, so we wanted to rest it on cribbing.

Cribbing is two-foot sections of lumber appropriate for railroad ties, very heavy stuff. You stack it up under the boat like Lincoln logs. Unfortunately, while fetching enough to hold up the centerboard, Margaret threw her back out.

The next day, the sander arrived and I started on the centerboard.  The sanding went well, except that there were these places where round bits of fiberglass showing through the paint.  What are these?  Blisters.  Yep, no doubt about it.  Blisters.  Some of them even ooze ugly liquids when I poke them.

Now the “simple” project had a major complication.  However much we wanted to just zip through this, we couldn’t slap bottom paint over the blisters.  So I told Kenny that we wouldn’t be ready to have the boat moved on the original schedule, and now the job was redefined like this:

Sand all the paint off, down to bare fiberglass.  Grind out the blisters.  (Hello to my old friends, the 4 1/2″ angle grinder and Mr. Dremel!)  Water wash and solvent wash everything.  This was the only part of the job I would let Margaret do, since the grinding and sanding is at an awkward angle for a bad back.  Oops! Missed a couple blisters, especially some deeper ones.  Grind out more blisters.  (Apologize to my poor wife for doing this after she already washed it.)  Water wash and solvent wash again.  Fill the holes with epoxy and expensive West System colloidal silica filler.  Run out of filler after doing one side and a third of the other.  Buy some cheap cab-o-sil the next morning when the yard opens.  Fill the rest of the holes.  Sand them all smooth again.  Water wash and solvent wash.  Fill again with Awlfair fairing filler.  Sand it smooth.  Water wash and solvent wash it again.  Put three coats of barrier coat on the centerboard.  (Somewhere in the second coat figuring out which rollers would work and that brushing doesn’t)  Put two coats of bottom paint on the board and the trunk plus the bottom of the keel.  Since the centerboard was a little awkward to work on, I didn’t let Margaret do anything except the washing to prevent further injuries.

Whew!  After all this, collapse for an hour or two.

While I was sanding, grinding, filling, and painting, Margaret had been doing other jobs or resting her back (recovered by now). And finally, Flutterby is in her new home, about 100 feet away from her old home, out of Kenny’s way, and about four feet lower. We are very happy with her new altitude!