Day 135, Year 4: Getting Ready for Painting Nonskid
Date: Friday, March 6, 2009
Weather: Absolutely Beautiful Day; Very Hot
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
Windbird has been wrapped in plastic for two days now and we are very anxious to get that plastic wrap off. There are certain thin plastics that can harm the paint surface, but we are assured by Oh that he uses the higher grade that will not harm the paint. Luck, Lock, and Pond worked all day under the cellophane tent that is inside the big white tent preparing Windbird’s cabin top and cockpit for the nonskid painting tomorrow. For those of you who are not boaters, nonskid is a paint with either sand or some synthetic fiber in it that is applied to surfaces where you do not want to slip on a wet deck. This is almost everyplace, but for looks you want some smooth surfaces, thus the painting, then the masking off with tape, and then the repainting with nonskid. Mark was fascinated with the way Luck cuts masking tape into very thin strips to outline the areas, making absolutely perfect circles around fittings. Just this year, we learned that we could buy this very thin masking tape, but
that is expensive so they cut their own.
The nonskid will be applied tomorrow and hopefully the boat name will be painted. Once that happens, all the painting from the waterline up will be done!!!!!!! On Monday, we can start putting Windbird back together while the crew sands the bottom and the mast. In the meantime, we are finding more and more hardware to clean. Mark went into Windbird today for the first time in a couple of weeks. He dug deep into our spares supply and found things that he thinks we might use. He also got the aluminum mast step and stainless steel plate that sits under it. We had left those inside and needed to get them to clean and then have Oh’s crew paint the cast aluminum piece. So we cleaned these pieces and hardware on a few lines that we had bagged and forgotten about. Tomorrow we will just have to wait patiently and then on Sunday we can start by cleaning the big pieces of stainless that have been stored under Windbird during the painting-the supports for the dodger and bimini, the windvane steering that we hope to sell, the sissy bars that go around the mast, the boom crutch that sits behind the cockpit. On Monday, we will put all of these big pieces of stainless back on top so Muzza can start the canvas work and Nop’s crew can install the new arch. So after tomorrow, our “lazy” days are over. We will be working out in this heat all day everyday, and I have a feeling we will start using the pools here more frequently to cool off mid-day.
After working most of the afternoon on cleaning stainless pieces, we got a call from Neil and Ley of Crystal Blues. They wanted to drop by our apartment to drop something off. This something was a birthday gift of homemade mango chutney, make on my birthday by Ley. What a special gift. Thank you, Ley and Neil. And then this afternoon, Mark saw Linda and Pieter of Dutch Touch. This is a boat that crossed the Pacific at the same time as we did. Arrangements were made for us to meet for dinner. And then Tory and Piet Hein of Double Dutch called and said they were coming to visit and hoping to have dinner. They have a “Dutch” connection with Dutch Touch so it was a perfect time for all of us to get together. Tory and Piet Hein will be leaving on Monday or Tuesday for their Indian Ocean crossing and Pieter and Linda are here to provision and will be leaving in about a week. It was great fun getting together. Tory and Piet Hein are counting on us going around South Africa so we can visit them at home in Cape Town. We’re just not ready to make that decision yet, but Tory is counting on the visit.
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| 090306 Day 135 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Getting Ready for Painting Nonskid |
