As Deb mentioned my weekend involved carrying a cold bug around with all the associated joys that come with that assignment. I'm going to blame it on last week's overnight trip to Harrisburg, PA. The hotel was comedy central for a Rodeo, packed full, and complete with horse trailers, those goofy string ties, huge belt buckles, knee high boots, and mutton chop side burns. All this in the central PA mountains in January, where there wasn't a cow that needed poking or a range that needed homing for lord knows how many miles. It was silly to the point of pure fun, costumes, characters, and play acting with the added thrill of broken bones and associated mayhem. Some of our human family are delightfully weird.
At breakfast most of the tables were shaded by cowboys wearing their hats. I guess they were afraid the sprinkler system was going to fire up and they wanted to keep their eggs dry. Anyway, I'm sure one of those cowboys was being generous with a cold, or maybe it was one of the horses.
Though my cup of enthusiasm was nearly empty Deb managed to get me out of the V-birth early Saturday morning to pull the main and head sail off the boat before the winds picked up. The wx was perfect, the air was warm and still with the day pretending to be an April spring day. Pretending. By evening the rain had come (Yeah!), slacked a bit, then turned to sleet and ice pellets. (Yeah?) We got another layer of sleet this morning making us all walk a bit like penguins to keep on our feet.
By this morning I was feeling a bit better and slightly motivated with the pilot berth mod first on the list. All I needed to do was move the cushion and make a pattern to take home for cutting the main part ... ah but this is Kintala. The bottom outboard edge of the cushion was soaking wet, actually laying in a ribbon of water that ran the whole length of the berth on the hull side. Fixing the leak became part of the mod, which would required removing the teak slats at the hull, which meant removing the shelf, which meant removing the AC plug, chain plate cover, three 6 foot long trim strips, and one light fixture. Even that wasn't quite enough and getting the teak panel out was a Chinese puzzle requiring a mysterious combination of twisting, turning, flexing and positioning before it would clear. As usual, a couple of minutes turned into a couple of hours, and the port side of the boat is in a minor state of trash. (I firmly believe that some "state of trash" is actually normal for a boat.)
The good news is it appears the water is a result of condensation and not a deck leak. One firring strip is loose so it will require being reattached. It seems a good idea to glass it onto the hull this time, and the other 3 will get a layer of glass added as well, which will lead to some epoxy paint, insulation, and reassembly. Then back to the mod.
At breakfast most of the tables were shaded by cowboys wearing their hats. I guess they were afraid the sprinkler system was going to fire up and they wanted to keep their eggs dry. Anyway, I'm sure one of those cowboys was being generous with a cold, or maybe it was one of the horses.
Though my cup of enthusiasm was nearly empty Deb managed to get me out of the V-birth early Saturday morning to pull the main and head sail off the boat before the winds picked up. The wx was perfect, the air was warm and still with the day pretending to be an April spring day. Pretending. By evening the rain had come (Yeah!), slacked a bit, then turned to sleet and ice pellets. (Yeah?) We got another layer of sleet this morning making us all walk a bit like penguins to keep on our feet.
By this morning I was feeling a bit better and slightly motivated with the pilot berth mod first on the list. All I needed to do was move the cushion and make a pattern to take home for cutting the main part ... ah but this is Kintala. The bottom outboard edge of the cushion was soaking wet, actually laying in a ribbon of water that ran the whole length of the berth on the hull side. Fixing the leak became part of the mod, which would required removing the teak slats at the hull, which meant removing the shelf, which meant removing the AC plug, chain plate cover, three 6 foot long trim strips, and one light fixture. Even that wasn't quite enough and getting the teak panel out was a Chinese puzzle requiring a mysterious combination of twisting, turning, flexing and positioning before it would clear. As usual, a couple of minutes turned into a couple of hours, and the port side of the boat is in a minor state of trash. (I firmly believe that some "state of trash" is actually normal for a boat.)
The good news is it appears the water is a result of condensation and not a deck leak. One firring strip is loose so it will require being reattached. It seems a good idea to glass it onto the hull this time, and the other 3 will get a layer of glass added as well, which will lead to some epoxy paint, insulation, and reassembly. Then back to the mod.
2 comments:
The condensation problem here is brutal with all the rain we have. We have friends who use a fairly large dehumidifier on their boat. They live in a marina so they leave it on almost all the time, except when they are at anchor somewhere. They say it has made all the difference in keeping the boat dry and comfortable. If we go out in cold weather, we awaken to condensation dripping onto our bed in the v berth. I hate that and hope to avoid it on the next boat.
It is a mystery why builders of cabin boats have such an aversion to installing insulation. Sometimes I think kids do better jobs building tree houses.
Post a Comment