The long weekend

I was really looking forward to the extra day of boatwork on the holiday weekend. Unfortunately, my lawnmower was thinking the same thing and wanted to spend some quality time with me. I hate lawns. I hate mowing lawns. I spent half of Saturday trying to get the lawnmower to work (its my own fault, I never do any maintenance on it) before I gave up and went to the boatyard only to be interrupted by other stuff. Sunday, I again spent the morning working on the mower before giving the neighbor $20 to mow my lawn. Parts are on order. I would let the lawn go how it wants except the neighbors (and my landlord) would probably give me the boot. I hate lawns.

Anyway, someone might remember this scuff mark when I hauled the boat out a year and a half ago.

I managed to get that spot painted Sunday. I still haven't cleaned the hull this year. That is on next week's list.

I found this disposable paint sprayer to be quite useful. Its not a real paint gun but its like a good rattle can sprayer.

The weather was humid and windy and not very ideal for painting but Monday was supposed to be worse (and it was) so I went ahead and shot it. I am happy with it until I can get the whole hull repainted.

After painting, I went back to the head for the last 10 percent. I measured and checked and measured again and in the end just closed my eyes and drilled a hole for the waste tank vent. The toerail and the uneven hull/deck joint had me a bit worried as to where the hole would end up but in the end it came out right where I wanted it to.

The only snag was that I found the hull to be one and a half inches thick. I expected much thinner that high up. I was also cutting through my three layers of biax cloth from several years ago when I made new chainplate knees. Still, much thicker than anticipated and too thick for the fitting I had. I couldn't get any threads to show through on the inside. In the end, I took my two inch forstner drill bit and countersunk around the hole on the inside so that the nut could be recessed in far enough to find the threads on the fitting. I installed the fitting bedded in 4200 and connected the hoses. Simple. Except that those thick waste hoses don't like spreading over the barbed fittings and there wasn't an excess of room in the head closet. It took some grunting and sweating and a little swearing but eventually, it all got connected.

Oh, a friend mentioned checking the bolts where the bowl on the toilet attaches to the mounting pad. Sure enough, they were all loose. Not sure why but it seems to be a pattern with Lavac toilets. They are tight now.

Monday was a stifling day of high humidity and no wind. That seemed like the perfect time to crawl into engine room and prep the engine. I don't know how to take interesting pictures of oil being changed, impellers changed, anti-freeze topped off, engine washed off of general working dust etc so I will just leave that to the reader's imagination. I didn't spill much so that was an improvement over last time.

After that, I spent some time doing general cleanup and prep for the transition from worksite to sailboat. I hauled a bunch of stuff home, cleaned the bilge and generally straightened up.

Oh, I also 'tried' to finish up the mast rigging. Even after shortening my long threaded ends on the jumper shrouds they were still too long to get the rig tightened up. Turns out the threaded rods in the jumper struts have to be extended quite a ways to have much effect on the tension. If I had paid more attention in trigonometry class I would have realized this sooner. The jumper shrouds are still a bit long so the solution seems to be to shorten the tangs. Now I am wishing I had left well enough alone. Oh well, I am sure after I shorten the tangs everything will fit perfectly...