Preparation Weekend #2

I had to spend some time on Saturday in the office, catching up with some student feedback. Then I went to the marina. Well, buying things like cleaning supplies and then to the boat. I haven't gotten as much done these first two weeks as I had hoped. One problem is simply that they still haven't turned on the water out to the docks, so still no major cleaning, especially of the hull and deck.

So, what did I do? Well, I've been sanding a number of different parts of the boat. It (she?) doesn't have a lot of wood, which is good, but there is some teak scattered around. I sanded the bowsprit, the sill into the cabin, and the hatch trim. I started on the sliding screened hatchboard, but haven't finished it. I worked on the smaller hatch boards last year, but they need more work, too. So what's left? Well, I did the exterior handrails last year, along with the cabin trim. The biggest jobs will be the cockpit coamings and the taffrail. The taffrail is in mostly good shape, but the coamings look pretty bad. I put a protective coat or two on two years ago, but ideally, it all has to come off and be redone. One problem with stripping the old varnish off is that the wood has dried out a bit, which means that there are little ridges in it. I can get much of the old varnish fairly quickly, but there remain lines of it in the valleys between the ridges. It quickly becomes a question of how much time and energy and wood loss is acceptable. Personally, I'm OK with leaving some of the old varnish behind. I don't intend to finish all of the varnishing this year, so I'm almost done with the sanding.

I also tried to fix the hasp that locks the cabin hatch. We'll see how it looks next week.

I have completed most of the interior cleaning. I'm not sure if it qualifies as actual "detailing," but I have used Clorox wipes to clean out a lot of the drawers and cabinets and wiped down the interior wood with orange oil. I found some mildew, which I will need to follow up on next week. The wipes will help with that, since the bleach will inhibit further mildewing. I also need to remember to get new shelf liner material to replace the old stuff.

I guess the only other thing that I worked on was trying to remove the old masking tape and its residue. That's going to be a tedious job, perhaps worse than sanding!