Day 148, Year 4: Work, Work, Work
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009
Weather: Gorgeous Day; Late Afternoon Sea Breeze; Early Evening Rain
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
I was wrong. The mast and boom were not ready to have their final coat of paint today. They were ready for a second primer coat and they got that since the weather decided to cooperate today. The second primer coat will now have to be hand-sanded again and then the final coats of AwlGrip will be applied. I’m not even going to take a guess at when this will be done, but hopefully soon so we can start putting that complicated mast back together.
Mark was determined to get all of the hatches installed today and even though it meant working until 6 pm, he did it. Driving the stick shift jeep yesterday caused his lower back problems to return today, but there was no stopping him from getting those hatches installed. Before he could install the forward hatch over our v-berth, I had to do a bit of hand-sanding. We have obviously let water sit in the frame at some point and the varnish was a mess. Sanding it before the hatch frame was installed
was so much easier than it would be if I had waited. But that was an unexpected job added to today’s list and now there’s another varnish job waiting to be done. But that can happen now or next year. My next job was to work on our bronze openable ports in the aft cabin. In our main cabin we have six port lights (or windows) that are not openable and have outer rims made of brushed stainless steel. In our aft cabin we have four bronze ports that do open and those bronze ports and I have a continual
battle. Should I let them be green as bronze does or do I continually clean them? They won out the past couple of years, but today I removed everything except the port frames. I will sand off the top layer of green and then use lemon juice and baking soda to clean them. But this time I will lacquer them in hopes that this will preserve them. I am doing this because today we had delivered new port light rims made of brushed stainless steel to replace the old bronze ones. We did this so that
when you look at Windbird, all the port light rims will match. I want to get the inner bronze cleaned and lacquered before Mark applies the outer rims, so I have to move quickly.
In the morning, Oh will deliver the letter we need to take to Immigration. We will take a taxi this time. It costs as much to take a taxi as it does to rent a jeep for the entire day, but I am just not brave enough to drive here and Mark just doesn’t need to drive right now. When we return, we will work on odds and ends jobs that will get us closer to finishing off the reinstallation of everything on Windbird. We will then wait to start the huge job of getting the hardware back on the mast and
boom. While we are waiting, Muzza is working on getting our new cockpit enclosure done and we hope Nop will be back to make the adjustments to the arch.
We heard from Shirena today and Tina and Robert are back in Thailand. They will arrive in Ao Chalong tomorrow and we hope to get together with them soon. We also heard from Double Dutch today. Tory and Piet Hien are on their way to the Maldives. Winds have not been very cooperative so they estimate that the passage from Thailand to the Maldives will take them twenty-one days. That’s the same number of days it took them (and us) to cross from the Galapagos to the Marquesas. But that passage
was twice as many miles. So the trek from here across the Indian Ocean is proving to be challenging one for friends this year.
