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.