Dog Days of Summer

The dog days of summer are here! With temperatures in the 90s and 100s, I cannot believe we actually work 5-8 hours a day on theYellowBird. While we have a strong work ethic, I would be less than honest if I said our patience and tempers are long. As we work and get overheated, dripping with sweat soaked clothes, we become more impatient with the task and each other. Luckily, we "mostly" mesh rather than clash so we take hydration breaks periodically and sometimes just flat out walk away from the task (and each other 😀).

July 14, 2017

Friday evening on an oppressively hot day. We have quite a to-do list for the weekend, so we headed over to the boatyard to make preparations for tomorrow. We stopped at Walmart on the way to pick up paint for the cockpit door. We had decided to repaint the doors an off-white, but changed our minds in the store and decided to go with true white. It seems cleaner and more nautical.

We borrowed a canopy shelter from Shawn’s brother Ian and set it up next to the YellowBird over the pile of supplies, ready for tomorrow.  Under it, we plan to construct a protective covering for the flybridge floor to protect the new floor from the direct sun.

We brought down the cockpit doors ready to paint tomorrow. We plan to get an early start so as to beat the heat. It was 106 in the saloon at 5:15pm! With no doors and the windows open. Hoping for cooler temperatures tomorrow.

No sooner had we gotten home than a thunderstorm blew up. We are hoping all of our preparations are still there in the morning. L

Saturday

We returned to the YB and found that the shade canopy had NOT blown over! It was a cool morning with a nice breeze. We took off the cover and found the storm had completely soaked the bridge. So we laid all the dry fitted coring out in the sun so the water would evaporate from the flooring.

We then headed to Lowe’s to get materials (1) cinderblocks to weigh the coring so that it would achieve the correct arc and (2) to build a shelter to cover the YB for when we fiberglass OVER the coring we put down. We bought 20 cinderblocks; 4 2*4*12 and 4 2*4*10 and a large tarp. We returned to Jennings and unloaded our newly acquired materials. It looks like we are building a shanty-town!

We then tackled the doors. We took apart the doors (which we had previously removed from the frame) and painted each section. We had quite a discussion (Shawn prevailed) on the “correct” way to spray paint a door frame. We (mostly me) painted the doors a pretty bright white.

While I painted the doors, Shawn was prepping the doorframe support (remember the rotten wood and supports he replaced?) for fiberglassing tomorrow.

Sunday

A long hot workday.  Today is the day we began the recoring process in earnest. I am amazed at how many steps there have been to this process. I thought we had begun “recoring” a couple of weeks ago.

I think I missed explaining a crucial step in this process. Last week, we took the PLYWOOD core sections we cut and on the plain side (without cuts) we sealed them with epoxy so that they we adhere better to the goop mixture we made today that is spread on the flybridge flooring.  As I have mentioned, I am not a “native nautical” so I may not use the correct terminology (although Shawn does correct me) but MY understanding (in layman’s terms) is that there are actually 3 layers to our flybridge decking. The bottom layer which we have now (the floor), the core layer (which we are replacing) and the fiberglass layer (which we will create OVER the core layer once we have it completed).

So the BIG task we completed today was adhering the new core to the flooring. We made a “goop” mixture of resin (it is a green globby mess) and a catalyst (methyl ethyl ketone? MEK). A quart of the green stuff needs 10 cc of catalyst  to “kick” or harden. So we mixed 1 or 2 quarts at a time depending on the size of the core to be fitted. We decided to start at the hatch (Section 7) even though it is the middle of the flybridge because those pieces are the most difficult to fit. (Remember we have dry fitted these pieces multiple times).

Dry fitted core

In order to weigh the coring and ensure that it adapts to the curvature, we placed the cinderblocks on top of the plywood coring. And...oh yeah...we had to GET the cinderblocks UP to the flybridge. We used a rope pulley...Shawn on the flybridge and me on the ground. I am going to start a plank challenge this week so that in the future I can lift those darn cinderblocks! My husband is STRONG!

So while we waited for the glop to harden, we turned our attention to the doorframe that Shawn prepped yesterday. Today I got my first experience with fiberglassing. So Shawn put more of the glop down the length of the doorframe and I placed what looked like heavy gauze bandages down the length on top of the glob. Turns out those "bandages" are actually fiberglass. Who knew? And more glop on top of the bandages. So now we wait for this to harden.

And of course there are NO BREAKS!!! Too much to be done! I am just kidding. We actually do take breaks and drink water, gatorade, sometimes sweet tea and we have snacks like pretzels and trail mix and granola bars. And we usually split a sandwich for lunch while we sit in the shade and talk about "what's next" to be done.

We painted the vents white and replaced them. It actually did make a noticeable difference in her look. (I painted and Shawn replaced).

We covered our YellowBird and went home hot, dripping with sweat, exhausted AND so very pumped because we are actually PUTTING HER BACK TOGETHER NOW!!!