The word for the day: "Patience"

The word for the day – Patience.

Headed over to the IGA for some supplies after coffee this morning. I figured that once I got dirty from working on the boat, I wouldn’t feel like running into town. I couldn’t believe how cool it got here last night and this morning. It dipped down into the 40s and I had my sweats on to run to the store. Brrr, we needed the heater last night but who’d have thought in southern Florida that you’d need it?

After getting a few needed things from the IGA it was time to switch back into my work cloths and get to work. Wayne drilled the new holes into the sprit to hold the hardware and the plan was to have the boatyard help lift it to the bow so we could place then attach it. but the drilling and mounting of the brackets took longer than anticipated. So we decided to try and get it hoisted up tomorrow. One thing I think all boaters learn is “Patience” with a capital P once work begins in the boatyard. The boat “Strange Bird” (the boat in front of us in the boatyard) has been put in and out of the water 3 times now. The first time when he went in, the boat started taking on water where the centerboard drops down (Tartans have a keel with a centerboard); the second and third times they found other leaks in the fiberglass then hose links near the thru hulls. Each time they move you with the boatlift it costs money, so...
“Patience” with a capital P.

While Wayne was working on the hardware to the sprit, I put the bottom paint on the hull and got one side of the keel and part of the other side of the keel done before I ran out of paint. The boat looks good on one side but not the other. Wayne said it would be fine. No one will see it as it will be underwater and the ablative paint from last year will work to keep the barnacles off.

Patience…

The bowsprit looked good. We decided since we were going to wait until tomorrow to have it lifted to the bow, I’d put a couple of coats of varnish on the topside. That way when we fitted the nose plate to it, it would have varnish beneath it to help to protect the wood. After that, when the nose plate was fitted to the bowsprit, we discovered that the holes that were drilled, using the old sprit as a template, didn’t line up with the nose plate.
Oh, oh…
We’ll have to re-drill the holes!

Patience…

The hardware store is open until 5pm so I ran up to see if I could find some wood filler (after discovering that the only stuff they had here was a can of it 3 times the size that I needed). I guess I was longer than I thought because when I got back to the boat, Wayne came down the ladder and gave me the biggest bear hug I’ve had in a long time. He’d heard an ambulance and fire trucks come roaring down the main street and had been getting worried because I’d been gone so long (½ hour). He was ready to send out the Calvary to find me. He had…

Patience…

I’d found two kinds of filler; one came in a tube that you could snip off the end and squeeze it out so we thought “that would work well”. “Lets just squirt it into the holes to fill them in.” Well first - it wouldn’t squeeze out of the tube. Then it all fell through the hole, so I guess the hole was to big as well as being 5 ½ inches deep. Anyhow it ended up all over my still tacky topside. When we tried to brush it off, it stuck quite tenaciously to the newly varnished topside.
Sigh…

Patience…

It was now time for dinner and to call it a day.
I’m done working in the boatyard for the day!
Halfway through grilling the pork chops, Wayne ran out of propane.... mhmmmm... Patience...
We did find another canister and the BBQd chops and coleslaw for dinner was wonderful.

The temperatures are supposed to dip into the low 40s again tonight, and did I mention? Laughing…
The heater doesn’t work.

“Patience” with a capital P…