Good day

It's starting to get hot, but I was able to get the deck mostly ready for painting this morning before it warmed up too much -- it's probably over 100 on deck by now. I still need to tape off the toerails and the few pieces of hardware that I didn't remove, but other than that and a quick wipe down with acetone, she's ready for the first coat. The forecast looks good for tomorrow, so I'll try to get started early while it's still cool. Maybe I can get a couple of coats on before it gets hot.

I finished up the bad section of starboard toe rail yesterday. I ended up having to use a little block plane to clean up the splice, but she looks pretty good now. It needs a little more filling, but I'll do that as I work on the other sections; There's a smaller section in the same area on the port side and a few smaller places on or near the transom, but they should all go really quickly. Hopefully, once they've been clamped and glued, I'll be able to fill all of them with one final mixture of epoxy and teak sawdust.

I'd never mixed teak sawdust with epoxy before, but learned the hard way that the teak causes it to setup much more slowly. I think it took about an hour for it to set, and was still easy to sand the next day. Now that I know how it works, I'll mix it up early and fill all the spots at once after I've given it a chance to start curing.

Once that's done, and the deck's have been primed, I'll cetol the toerails. The final step will be to caulk the edge, which I'll do before the final deck coats. I bought some one-part polyurethane, but might go with an epoxy instead. In any case, I'll put on at least one coat all over, then tape off and do the non-skid sections before re-coating the whole thing again. At this point, I might as well finish the deck completely before remounting any of the hardware of portholes while it's still on the hard and under a cover -- especially since the schedule's already completely blown and we're in the middle of hurricane season.

Zoe watch:

It's time for her bath again, so that's what we'll be doing as soon as I finish this post. She's under the bow sleeping right now.

Boat watch:

Cleaned the deck this morning and did a little final sanding. Will tape off sections later, either when it rains or once it cools off later this afternoon. Plan to move under the boat and and sand some of the teak that's the loose, e.g., the hand rails, companionway boards, and the teak handle on the sliding hatch, while it's too hot to do anything else.

Book watch:

Almost forgot to mention: I finished Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast" the day before yesterday, and enjoyed it very much, especially his descriptions of rounding the horn. Looks like "Voyage of the Beagle" will be the next one, in fact I've already started reading it. Although it covers about the same time period, the style is very different, almost analytical. I'm sure it will be very interesting, but just hope it will be as entertaining as Dana's.