Today, I finally felt like we were making some progress forward instead of just getting buried deeper in projects.  Some stuff actually started moving forward and we got stuff done.

But first, I have to say how lucky I am that I got a wonderful Valentine’s Day card from Ann with my morning coffee.  I only wish I had been as harumph, er, ah…proactive.  Well, I took us to a nice dinner as my contribution to Valentine’s Day.

So, now that the bobstay project is moving forward and in the machine shop, I decided to move on to a new project.  The lazarette hatches.  These are teak with plywood backing. They have been leaking and I knew they needed work, so I took them off and starting working on them.  I’ll make this long story short and let the pictures show that the plywood backing was rotting and almost all of it had to be scraped and sanded off.  But…the project’s still going well.  I got them down to the last bit of laminate, was able to put two coats of primer on them and tomorrow will patch them up with some putty.  Then I will either fiberglass the backs or epoxy a piece of plywood back on-I’m not sure which at this point, although I have cut some cardboard patterns should I decide to go with the plywood.

This is the top side of the hatch cover

Found some rot in the corners

After scraping some of the bad wood out, I found it was more extensive than I thought

Nice to have my new grinder (Christmas present from Mom and Dad)

Two hatches on the workbench almost ready to prime

On another note: the holes for the bobstay bolts had some "voids" in the fiberglass. We plugged them with dowels and filled them with epoxy. I'll drill them back out in a couple days when the epoxy dries. The new fitting is done and I'm picking it up tomorrow.

In the mean time, the one thing going according to schedule is Ann's work on cleaning and polishing the hull. Just check out the shine...!

Page one: our partial list for the boatyard folks...

Page 2 is the list of stuff we're supposed to do.

So…some progress.  Feels good to get something done other than just grinding away at the same stupid hole looking for the mystery bolt.

Hopefully more progress tomorrow as well and we’ll be working through the weekend hoping to catch up a bit from our slow start.  Would be nice to finish up so we can do some land cruising, but since we’re paying for the boatyard by the day, it’s important that we get all the needed work done so we can “splash” back in the water.  Some of our list can be done later when we’re back in the water, but there’s still a few things that can only be done while on the hard.