Progress lately has been a lot like watching paint dry, with a daily thunderstorm thrown in just to keep it interesting.  The fairing is done and we’ve put on three barrier coats so far.  We’ll do one more, but the first coat of anti-fouling needs to be done on the same day and finding a weather window for that may be difficult.  Otherwise, we could be finished with the bottom paint as soon as Day 19.

We want the bridgedeck to dry out as much as possible before we begin painting it, but the damp weather plays havoc with our efforts.  Sometimes an area that was dry the day before is dripping wet again in the morning.  At first we thought it was weeping out of the wood itself, but that no longer seems likely since we can’t find a source.  Now we think it must be coming from the air, but don’t understand how that could be the case either.  Maybe it’s little green men.  We had a dead serious conversation about setting up a time lapse camera to record what happens in the boatyard overnight.  That’s where we are mentally.

The moisture meter isn’t helping things either.  It gives a lot of false positives.  It will say an area is wet and we’ll drill into it only to find it completely dry.  It will say an area is dry, except for a small spot about an inch square that is completely soaked.  Of course it isn’t.  We have a second meter that gives similar readings, so we can at least rule that out.  The meter helped initially and we were able to find many pockets of standing water, but at this point I think it’s just making us crazy.

As I stood beneath Take Two and surveyed the destruction around me, I happened to glance up, and my gaze fell upon the underside of our trusty dinghy, our waterborne SUV.  Frankly, it’s been carrying around a little bit of Marathon for about two years now.  Everybody else takes their dinghy to the beach every once in a while and flips it over for a good scrubbing.  Ours is a bit too large for flipping over on the beach, and I’m a bit too lazy for scrubbing underwater.  But standing underneath it I realized that if I just lowered it a little bit, I’d be at the perfect height to give it that good scrubbing.  Without flipping it over.  Without being underwater.  And the boatyard was the perfect place to use some nasty chemicals that you’re not supposed to get in your eyes.  So that’s what I did.  And now the dinghy is much cleaner.  And so are my eyes.

The barrier coating has begun!

The novelty of this haulout thing has worn off and the days are running together.  Mudding and sanding, sanding and mudding.  Progress is measured in percentages.  

But the end is in sight.  Tomorrow we’re hoping to start the barrier coat.  It may reveal some spots that need more fairing, but I’m okay with that.  Just give me something I can check off the list.

The bridgedeck is still a question mark.  How long do we let it dry?  We’ve got 3,600W of lights pointed at it now, and it’s making a difference, but it’s slow.

The guy who runs the TraveLift here has been doing it for twenty-something years.  He’s very good at it.  Sure, he’s dropped a couple boats.  But how do you learn not to drop them if you never have, right?  So he’s the guy you want lifting your boat.  But he somehow got it in his head that boats must be blocked at a five degree incline.  I watched him block Take Two this way, and thought it was weird, but didn’t immediately see a problem.  Well, it’s been rainy recently and I can tell you, it’s a problem.  Think five degrees isn’t much?  Jack one end of your dining room table up six inches and see how you like that.  You’ll have gravy in your peas for sure.  God intended dining room tables and catamarans to be flat.  Anything else is just wrong.  

Apparently, Take Two’s port-side mast chainplates leak.  Thank you Billy, I never would have had the joy of discovering that if you hadn’t blocked my boat so they sat an inch deep in rainwater.

Let the record show it was Day Ten when I started losing my mind.  First we ran into a bad batch of fairing epoxy.  There was none good anywhere in town, so we had to have it shipped in from Miami.  Then the brand-new "heavy duty" air file (a pnuematic longboard) took a dump after only about 30 minutes of work.  Nope, can't get that locally either.  So we resorted to circular sanders, just to get something done.  This is the same tool we would have used to get the paint off in the first place if we hadn't used the fancy stripping process that took all our old fairing away.

To distract myself, I continue trying to figure out the bridgedeck.  I happened to have half a dozen 100W clamping worklights on the boat, specifically for drying out wet places.  I set those up on some of our worst spots to try and speed things up.  If that looks promising, I'll go get some 500W halogens.

The port stern repair is complete.  The starboard keel repair got done too.  We were able to cut away enough of the block to expose the damage without having to pick the boat up.

Who am I kidding?  We won’t be out of here in a week.  Fairing started today.  That’s going to be a slow process.  Then it gets two coats of barrier epoxy and three coats of bottom paint.

We took a bit more scientific approach to evaluating the water collected from bridgedeck.  We learned that all the water collected was indeed salty to some degree.  It ranged from 5,000 parts per million, which equates to mildly brackish water, all the way up to 1 million parts per million (salt crystals).  The darkest nastiest stuff was drained from under the generator space and actually contained oil.  

I think the salt water came in through the conduit system.  The watermaker is our only source of salt water and the conduit runs through a little sump area in that compartment.  I believe at some point the sump drain was plugged and salt water flooded into the conduit and then traveled all over the place.  The oil clearly seeped through the floor, and we have moisture in a couple other places where we've had standing water problems in the past.

The upside is that the water in the bridgedeck all seemed old.  If we can plausibly explain how it got there, and I think we’re close, then I can feel better that it isn’t going to come back.  The drain idea kind of died when I started to count how many I’d need.  Probably better just to go down there with a moisture meter whenever I start to lose sleep worrying about it. 

The family has left again for the next leg of their road trip.  This time down to the Keys.

The sanding of the bridgedeck is finally finished and we’re taking twice-a-day moisture readings to monitor drying progress.  We’re going to seal the wood, but first we want to make sure all the moisture is out. I’m beginning to wonder if this dry time might keep the boat in the yard for awhile.

Otherwise, things are going well.  We just crossed the 1-week mark, and it looks like we have a fighting chance at hitting our 2-week outside estimate.  There’s only one spot in the DIY area of the yard for a boat our size and it’s popular with catamarans, so running behind schedule would normally be a problem.  But we discovered awhile back that the woman who manages the boatyard schedule has a weak spot for Tanya’s cookies, and we began bribing her with goodies early on.  So when I asked for two weeks in the yard, she gave me four.  Maybe that was just pessimism on her part, but I prefer to think she was being nice.  In either case, we’re in no immediate danger of being rushed back into the water.  

The port keel repair is completed.  The jackstand damage under the port stern has been ground back, the broken planks cut out, and a piece of plywood chamfered in.

I had to go out of town today, so did not get to witness the draining of the bridgedeck first-hand.  I’m told it was impressive.  Not just the quantity of water, but also the variety.  Apparently it was a panoply of colors and smells.  The crew took pictures and saved samples for my later enjoyment.  Our human test kit reported that the brown liquids burn mightily in open cuts.  Interesting.  For my own sanity, I think we’re going to have to consider permanent drains in these areas.

Repairs of the port keel and stern were begun. There's an area on the bottom of the starboard keel that needs attention, but will have to wait until we shift the blocks.

Sanding the bridgedeck continues, though today I did none myself.  The family was in town and I spent the morning at the beach with the big kids, where we got sanded ourselves.  The surf was up.  We had a serious talk about safety beforehand, and everyone did real well.  There were some scrapes and bruises, but it was great fun.  Alas, my phone has gone missing after several years of faithful service.  I think it swims with the fishes.

In the afternoon, Eli and I went to the boat and he helped me change the backstay chainplate bolts.  He had the inside job, which required crawling way back under the transom steps to tighten the nuts.  Kids are great for that kind of work.  Several of the old bolts had corroded and the heads broke off when I tried to remove them.  I’m sure the new ones are stronger, but I’m paranoid now that they might leak.

Holes from the removed thru-hulls and sonar transducer have been plugged.  Bad wood has been cut out around the cockpit drains.  Bootstripe has been cleaned in preparation for fairing the hulls.  That's going to be the next big job.

Sanding overhead is a hard, messy job.  It is a painfully awkward position, and the machine has to be held – no, pressed – up to the work.  Depending on the machine being used, dust mask and eyewear is somewhere between a good idea for safety’s sake and necessary for survival.  My sander of choice is a Festool RO 150 FEQ, which puts me solidly in the survival category.  The thing is a beast and tears off paint at an incredible rate… if you can hold it up.  For every one minute I can hold it, I probably have to rest for two.

Now for the Surprise of the Day:  At some point in the last couple years, I noticed some hull damage on the inside of the port transom aft of the rudder.  The wood was broken, thrust upward like tectonic plates.  It was dry, so I assumed that whatever had happened, it had been repaired from the outside.  It wasn’t a high stress area, so I wasn’t too worried about it.  I repaired the inside to the best of my ability at that time, and promptly forgot about it.

But then during this haulout I noticed the spot looked a little funny on the outside, remembered my inside repair, and we decided to dig into it.  It turns out it wasn’t repaired from the outside at all.  I now think that a boatyard worker, probably at our last haulout, over-tensioned a jackstand and didn’t tell anyone.  The planks of the hull were broken, but the fiberglass skin held its shape, and the water out, for many hard miles.

Another spot repaired at the same yard, where our keels were damaged while hauling out on their rail, we found was not done correctly and will have to be redone.

That was at a “full-service” yard, where I was supposed to turn over my baby and wait until they’re finished billing me.  They tolerated my daily visits, but I wasn’t allowed to do any work.  I had to rely on their personnel for everything.  It was not an experience I’m in a hurry to repeat.  

This time we’re at a yard that allows Do-It-Yourself work, and the difference is huge.  Nothing happens unless I do it or arrange to have it done.  I’ve hired a crew that I trust, and we work on the boat as a team.  Mistakes can always happen, but at least this time they’ll be my mistakes.

I love a good change of pace. I’ve been a borderline burnout for a while now, but moving the boat this summer temporarily cured me. And now I have this wonderful opportunity to get out of the house (can’t go home even if I want to), so of course that’s where I want to be. The grass is always greener, right? The five kids and I have been gone about a week now, spending two or three nights in each place. We’ve visited grandparents, old friends, uncles, aunts and cousins, and now we’re staying in a beach condo for the weekend with Jay.

The kids don’t mind relaxing the routine a bit, especially if it means putting home school on the back burner, but Rachel really likes her schedule. To try to keep nap and bed times consistent, I have a porta-crib. So everywhere we go, I set it up, put her familiar objects inside and show it to her, saying, “Look, Rachel! It’s your bed!” She isn’t buying it. She knows that this is not home, and wakes up a few times each night calling my name just to make sure I’m still there, but she does go to sleep and it is providing some stability. Luckily, she has also been able to sleep in the car, so I plan drive times so that they overlap a nap. So far, so good.

The coolest thing about home schooling is this flexibility to come and go as we please. In fact, all the people with whom we are staying happen to be home schooling, too, so they can make time and space for our visit. This is very accommodating of them, since I know we are quite a distraction. My brother has six kids (with another on the way) so my sister-in-law has to plan meals for 14—and boy can she cook! An army of children is no match for her. I try to help out with dishes, cleaning, and meal prep, but she outshines me any day.

My friends Kristen and Howard also are home schooling their three girls (brilliant little cuties they are, too), and they made space for six more for a couple of days. They are unused to the rambunctiousness of my three boys, but are very gracious. Kristen, if I may boast for a moment, started home schooling at least in part because of contact with our family, but she has far surpassed me in her ambitions as a home school mom. Her website, www.teachingstars.com chronicles her homeschool journey and provides helpful information on all sorts of home school topics and curricula. She is inspiring another generation of moms to give their children a great education at home.  

Next week, we’re headed to the keys to visit our favorite place, Curry Hammock State Park (www.floridastateparks.org/curryhammock), and our home school friends, Park Ranger, Ken, his wife, Amy, and their three fabulous kids. Hopefully, we’ll do a little snorkeling, fishing, and playing in the sand, and maybe some reading, writing and arithmetic on the side.