This morning was nice and sunny. I pumped up the tires on Deborah's bike and she went off to ride while Heidi ran. I was going to go but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't as they were gone longer than I expected.
Instead of riding I went down and got the boat. Since I started tying the tarp to the trailer, instead of cinder blocks, it's pretty quick and since I leave the tarp on I get to work in the shade. That turned out to be good because it was HOT today.
First order of business was prepping the places where the gelcoat was cracked. I picked all the loose stuff off and then used the dremel to clean up the edges and get a good surface. The sections on the side of the battery locker were definitely voids - there were loose fibers with no resin. That changed the plan. I ground out the other spots, then went and mixed some epoxy to wet out the voids.
I also decided to straighten the tabernacle that I'd managed to install cockeyed last summer. I measured and marked the center of the tabernacle, then tried to find the center of the area where it mounts. That was annoying and frustrating. A few taps with a ball peen hammer and I had it about as good as it was going to get. The trick was, how do I tighten it without removing the forward hatch? Luckily Pepe came by to mow the lawns, so I got him to hold the wrench while I used the impact wrench below. It looks like things are much tighter now. I think the butyl got me on that one; I read something about needing to tighten it slowly and more than once.
At some point I managed to dump 1/2 the water in the dessicant container on the cabin floor. The @#$@ stuff does NOT clean up! It's obviously saturated with something and it makes a slippery mess. The paper towels do not absorb it well and windex doesn't touch it. Grrr!
We took a break for Heidi's birthday lunch at Elmer's with the girls, Homero, Gaby and little J. We ran by the auto parts store on the way home so I could get crimp connectors and wet/dry sand paper. When we got back the epoxy was almost ready, but not quite, so I started on the new LED lights I got on sale last fall.
I removed the v-berth light, which was the last incandescent fixture in the cabin, then started figuring out what I wanted to do. The obvious thing was to put the new one in where the old one was. The problem is that the wires don't fit in the end cap provided. And there's no switch. Hmm. I recycled the switch from the old light and, with a bit of dremel work, made it fit (mostly) in the end cap of the new light. Did I mention it's a 2-way switch? That got me thinking. What if I hooked up the other light to the same switch?
Since the wiring didn't fit in the end cap, I grabbed a little wooden box a wallet came in that I'd been holding for just this kind of issue. It already had a couple of cut outs for the wires so in they went, and I screwed it in next to the light.
The wiring in the end cap was a pain and it took several tries and additional cutting with the dremel to the get the cap to stay on.
I ran a second pair of wires from the switch, through the box, and behind the bulkhead. There's a bit of a wire chase there so I was able to poke it through to the other side, where I ran it behind the hanging storage pockets on the bulkhead, then up the ceiling to the light, which I mounted about 4 inches aft of the compression post.
Throw the rocker switch on the light in the v-berth to the left and voila!
These are waaay brighter than the factory replacement LED's I bought a few years ago. Should be nice for reading.
When I got done with the lights I decided it was time to clean the cabin and get rid of the residue from the dessicant spill. I vacuumed and then scrubbed the floors with pinesol. That seemed to do the job on the slick stuff.
The final task was applying gel coat to the holes I'd ground out this morning. The epoxy seemed well set, no surprise given how warm it was. The gel coat I got from Catalina Direct is kind of a putty. It was really thick (I think some had started to set even without the hardener) but the hardener softened it up nicely. I got the small spots at the back of the cabin, and the two on the battery box done before the first batch started to set up. It was really weird when it started to cook off in the cup - almost like little fibers, and once it started it set fast. Luckily I still had about 1/2 the container of putty so I mixed up a second batch and finished the two remaining holes. It was after 5 so I got Deborah to help me bring things off the boat and then we took it down to the lock up.
What's left to do? I need to sand down the gel coat patches, wash the boat, and paint the bottom. Then down to Orchard Point to launch and wait for Richardson Park to open.
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