Monday, March 11, 2013

At the boat...but my project's in the City

Another weekend with me at the boat and my project back in the city. Which means the deck monkey wasn't very productive, though the dodger is sporting three new snaps so the side panels don't flap in the breeze. Back in the city good progress is being made on the table project during the week, so all is not lost. Sadly while there is progress on the project in the city, the project of getting out of the city isn't going near so well. We have had a pretty good parade of people looking at the house but no one has offered us any money. In fact we haven't even gotten a low-ball offer to refuse. One of these days someone is going to buy the house ... then the fun really begins.

One of our friends at the marina asked Deb about the table project, specifically he was curious as to when I became a cabinet maker. She rightly replied that I am a sheet metal mechanic pretending to be a cabinet maker. I think the project is going okay, but I'm sure a real wood worker would be doing the job twice as nice in one quarter the time. I glued the last piece on the bulkhead cabinet this morning so, with any luck, by the end of the week that part will be stained and clear coated. The material for the table itself is in shipping.

Readers of these musing know that I am concerned about the amount of work required to keep a boat in shape, and am disappointed by what I perceive as the low quality of marine design, manufacturer and maintenance. On the other hand one of the things I really like about owning a boat is it gives me a reason to try things like making a bulkhead table. Projects remaining before Kintala comes out of the water include the inside cabin work, leaking ports, leaking hatches, securing the life line stanchions and replacing the life lines with spectra. (I really liked the spectra lines we put on Nomad, good looking and easy to work with. I have no faith in the plastic covered wire that is on Kintala now and really want to see it go away.) As the season gets underway, and while we wait to see how the schedule unfolds, I hope to get some "cruising practice" in by doing a lot of this work hanging on the hook in our favorite cove. We are determined to get Kintala off the dock and out on the water this year ... assuming the temperatures are not killer high and the lake level killer low. Even "lake cruisers" have to give way to Mother Nature.

1 comment:

Latitude 43 said...

Hanging on the hook makes everything feel OK. We are most the comfortable dropping the Bruce rather than being tied to a dock. My projects on the hook tend to just be cleaning the dinghy with a beer, floating in the water with a beer, and making dinner on the grill with a beer.
Not once did I fire up a power tool off the inverter. Oh well. Better get all my shit done before I leave eh!
P