Day 329, Year 8: Dinghy Disaster Narrowly Averted
Date: Saturday, September 28, 2013
Weather: Partly Sunny and Warm, 70 degrees F
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
You would think we might have learned a thing or two about boats by now. But, no. We haven’t. Or maybe it is that we have no common sense. But in any case, the idea to paint the new dinghy bottom late in the day yesterday caused a near disaster. We got up this morning and drove into Falmouth to see Jonah play soccer. Mark then took me to storage to wait for a gentleman who wanted to buy our bandsaw and Mark went back to Woods Hole to put on the keel guard. The plan was for him to then return to pick me up so we could go see Sam play soccer at noon before returning to Woods Hole to put the second coat of bottom paint on the dinghy. But when Mark returned to Woods Hole, he found the dinghy with dried drips of bottom paint all over the tubes. Evidently the paint did not dry at all before dew fell. The dinghy was sitting with the bottom-side up and the droplets of water ran down through the paint, over the taped edge, and on to the new hypalon tubes. It looked like a heavy rain fell as we were painting it. Mark was mortified when he saw it, but he immediately began wiping off the drying drips. He had the bottle of isopropyl alcohol and paper towels that he was supposed to wipe the area where he was going to apply the keel guard, so he used that to try and remove the paint from the hypalon. He didn’t even take time to call me and by 12 noon, I decided to call him to see if he had forgotten to come get me. He sounded panicked and just said to me that bottom paint had dripped all over the dinghy tubes and that is was a mess. He added that he was having some luck cleaning up, but that he needed to hurry, so we hung up. Then I was panicked. I was imagining the worst from his tone of voice. About this time the man came to pick up the bandsaw. He was ‘only’ an hour late in arriving, but I used the time to sort through things to see what more can be discarded. And as soon as he left, I locked up the storage unit and ran to catch the 12:30 bus to Woods Hole. By the time I got there, Mark was finished with the clean-up and had applied the KeelGuard. The clean-up job was not perfect, but just a little more work was needed with a toothbrush and the alcohol to get into cracks and crevices. Where the bottom paint should have been there was a runny mess, but at least it was dry. I used every last bit of paint and barely got the bottom covered again. Thankfully the sun was shining and it was relatively warm, so it dried very quickly. Just in case there is something wrong with the paint or the way we applied it, we turned the dinghy right-side up for the night. If it drips, at least it will drip down. We still can’t believe we made such an ill-advised (the grandkids tell me I’m not supposed to use the word ‘stupid’) decision. But total disaster was avoided. We’ll have to check first thing in the morning to see what happened overnight with today’s paint job. Hopefully, it will be fine and we can launch the dinghy tomorrow. We are very anxious to see how it performs in the water. It looks long and sleek versus our current dinghy which is shorter and stout in appearance. The difference between 16-inch and 17-inch tubes is huge, but we’ll live with how this one performs, like it or not. I’m hoping to be able to give a good review, but we shall see. Coming into this, I must admit I prefer short and stout in dinghies.
Our daughter Heather’s birthday is on Monday, we are taking the boys for 24 hours. I picked Sam and Jonah up at 5 pm and was met at the door with Ollie who had on his backpack (but nothing else but a diaper) and was ready to go just like the big boys. Unfortunately, he’s just not ready to do without momma for an overnight, but we will pick him up in the morning. While I was gone, Mark used a borrowed battery tester to see how our batteries are doing. They were all fully charged, so it looks like the new batteries are performing nicely. When I returned with Sam and Jonah, Mark met us to introduce the boys to the new dinghy. They inspected it and are now anxiously awaiting the launch. When we got back to Windbird I started cooking breakfast for dinner. This was a special request of Sam and Jonah, so we had bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, and French toast. Between the two of them, they ate almost a whole package of bacon and ate all but 4 of the link sausages. Since Jonah doesn’t eat sausage, I guess Sam was the culprit. They still had room for a small piece of a chocolate chip cookie cake but neither could finish the small sliver I gave them. I think they were truly full. After dinner they cuddled up with Granddad and watched the first part of The Blue Planet while I did a little galley clean-up and made the beds. They both conked out almost as soon as their heads hit the pillow. But they’ll be up early and we will all head to shore to check on how the dinghy fared overnight. Sure hope I can give you a good report tomorrow night.
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| 130928 Day 329 Cape Cod, USA–Dinghy Near-Disaster |
