Finally cooled off

The weather finally cooled off, but it looks like it will warm up again this weekend for the 4th of July. The 10 day forecast indicates that the high on the 10th will only be 85, so I should be able to head over to Hicksville and take the Amateur Extra exam without having to worry about Zoe. It's at 9am, so I should be back well before noon. It's still a few degrees above normal for this time of year, but a lot better than some of the 90+ degree days we've had lately. I see it'll be back in the low 90's by Sunday.

The boat is progressing, but I've been spending a few hours a day studying for the exam. All the questions are in published question pools, and the Amateur Extra exam pool consists of 735 questions, of which 50 will be on the exam. To pass, you just need to get 37 correct.

The questions are divided into 10 different sections that are further subdivided into subsections, with each subsection averaging around 15 questions, one of which will be on the exam. So each question has about a one in 15 chance of making it into the test. Most of the sections are pretty straight forward, but there are a few that are more technical and require a bit more understanding of electronics than I currently possess. But since those comprise such a small percentage of the entire test, I've been skipping them on the practice exams (normally around 4-8 questions), and have still been averaging around 40 correct answers, so I think I'll be okay. I'll try to learn the information if I get a chance, but won't let that stop me from taking the exam on the 10th. I'm currently going through the entire list of questions so there won't be any surprises when I take the test. I can always guess on the ones I don't know and may get a couple extra points.

The ARRL site has several links to sites that maintain the question pools and have flash cards and practice exams. The one I've found most useful is maintained by KB0MGA, that's his call sign as well as his domain name. I'm over half way through the flash cards right now, and hope to go through them at least twice before I take the exam. The site keeps track of the questions you skip or miss, and will represent them to you once you've seen all the questions at least once. It's a pretty good system, but once I've finished the boat and have more time, I may try to create a more flexible framework which could be used for this or other educational purposes. Maybe I'll do it for the Coast Guard exam questions.

Zoe watch:

Had dinner with Zoe at the bar/restaurant down the street last night. We had fish and chips, which they do pretty well. It was pretty good, and Zoe got a good bit of fish, but the music was loud, as were some of the patrons, and she didn't seem comfortable -- she kept trying to climb up in my lap -- so we ate and left.

She's been hanging out under the bow lately. It's nice and shady there until around 5pm, so I don't have to worry about her until late in the day when the sun is much lower and it's already starting to cool off.

Boat watch:

I'm still working on the freshwater and bilge systems, so I don't want her near the drains. I'm going to do a little more cleaning today, then reinstall the pumps and flush it again. I had to rearrange everything in the saloon so I could get to the lower lockers on the port side under the settee to pull the old lines, clean it, and install the new ones. Once I'm done cleaning today, I'll run the new line from the upper tank to the lower one. I still need to order the float valve, but am going to concentrate on getting everything put back together before I worry about the "would be nice" stuff.

While cleaning the lockers, I found where one of the previous owners had removed some bracing along the hull and didn't fix it correctly. I don't think I'll take the time to do it now, but I'll need to fill in a small depression with fiberglass at some point. There's a piece of iron in the hull that's exposed and since the fiberglass has been removed -- probably to run some hoses -- and water stands there. I want everything to drain nicely and not have any standing water anywhere on the boat, but again, that's a "would be nice" issue that I'll handle some time in the future. I'm sure there will be several of them before I'm done.

Back when I did the bottom, I noticed a patch on the outside of the hull that wasn't done very well, i.e., it hadn't been ground down and floated out smooth. I took care of that when I refinished the bottom and painted it with barrier coat, but didn't see any evidence inside the boat of why it had been patched. Now, I think that this might have been the issue. I'll tap around the area from the outside to make sure it's sound, and refinish the inside if I detect any issues. At this point, I don't think it's a problem, but I'd rather take care of it now than try to jury rig something after it's too late.

I did come up with an idea on how I can fill the last dozen or so bolt holes in the coach roof. The problem, as I've written before, is that there's a void between the bottom of the deck and the inner headliner, so I need to fill it with something before I try to fill the hole with resin from the top, or it will all leak out. I've tried several methods, but they all seem to leak a little, and it's difficult shoving something up into the holes.

The solution I've decided to try is to use earplugs. I bought a bunch of them a while back -- the office where I used to work was so crowded I could barely hear myself think. They are spongy and about an inch long and tapered at one end. I'm not sure if resin will stick to them, but I know it doesn't stick to plastic, so I'll cover them in a piece of plastic bag before I try to use them. You just need to compress them like you do when you want to put them into your ear and insert them into the hole. As they expand, they'll fill the void and hopefully not push too far up into into the hole in the deck. I'll use a light to look down into the holes to make sure the plugs don't go up too far.

Once they're in, I should be able to fill all the holes in one session, then pull the plugs back out. I'll still have to fill the holes in the headliner, but that's a cosmetic issue that currently falls into the "would be nice" category. My goal right now is to get the deck sealed and painted so I can remount the handrails and hardware and get out of here. I can live with a few blemishes in the interior, but don't want to spend another winter up here.