Yeah! Boatwork!

Many a moon ago, when I was first starting out as an aircraft mechanic, I would walk up to some million dollar airplane, put a nice sharp drill bit against some piece of shiny aluminum skin, take a deep breath and punch a hole. Then I would smile at whoever my work partner was for that day and say, "Too late to back up now."

The Boulder Marina's "No Boat" party was last night. It was a lot of fun to see the gang and catch up on the winter's doings. Some had made it to the BVI for a little warm weather sailing. Some had made it to the SVI. A lucky one or two made both. But even those lucky enough to make a sailing trip this off season agreed that this has been a long, cold, endless winter.

Ah but this morning; sunshine and the promise of slightly warmer temps had Deb and I eager for a trip to the lake. My plan was a kind of low key approach to the work list, putter around a bit, maybe pull a part or two, get a feel for the best way to get the work done and the boat back in the water. Work smarter, not harder.



Instead Deb and I fell onto little Nomad like a couple of deranged salvage operators. Tool bags were opened, the ladder was set in place, and the next thing you know parts were flying in all directions. I pulled the prop, an easy job but my big wrench was down in the dock box. Then I started pulling the rubber rub rail off the stern. It came off pretty easy as well but underneath? Ugh, spider city. And after pulling the chaffing strip, (otherwise known as duct tape) I found a few places where the hull / deck seam had opened up a bit. Clean and reseal but...oh yeah, the sealer is down in the dock box. This time I grabbed anything that looked even remotely helpful, cleaning stuff, polishing stuff, scotchbrite...



With the stern rub rail taking a lot longer than I thought I decided to leave the port and starboard sides for another day. There was clearly not enough sunlight left in the sky to take them on. Instead I moved the ladder to the bow to start pulling life lines in preperation for removing the bow pulpit.

Meanwhile Deb had disappeared into the interior. She spent the day down there and, when she emerged Nomad's interior was, well, not Nomad's interior any longer.



Trim strips were down, the headliner was laying out in the parking lot, wasps nests and other creepies had been evicted from behind the V-birth side panels, the panels over the settees where lying on the deck, leaks had been discovered under the bow pulpit and aft port side stanchion, and (this was a bit of a shock) we discovered that Nomad was built without a single backing plate on the pulpits or stanchions. (No wonder the thing felt soft everythime I went forward to change a headsail!)



I was glad to find the chain plates sporting big, sookey metal backing plates. I thought I had hit the outside of the boat pretty hard but Deb had seriously rearranged the inside of our little boat.







Too late to back up now...