Wine bath

Hope to roll the final coat of primer on the forward 3/4's of the deck today. The second coat went on better than the first, but it still wasn't as flat as I would have liked. I need to do a little more sanding before I wipe it all down and get it ready for painting, but I should be able to start before noon. That'll give me a lot of time to roll and tip it while the light is good.

I plan to mix up smaller batches and take more time for each. The pot time is a few hours, but it's tough to keep a wet edge, especially once it starts to kick. Perhaps the smaller sections will allow me the opportunity to tip more carefully -- the better you lay it down, the less you have to sand, and I'm pretty well worn out sanding at this point. If this coat goes on well enough, I'll be ready to put down the first finish coat in the next few days. Once that's done, I can start remounting all the hardware, varnish the toe rails, and caulk along the edge between the deck and toe rail.

At that point, I can remove the cover, at least on the forward section. I still have to finish the cockpit, but hope to have it painted by the time I get all the hardware on the forward section remounted. I have lots of hardware to remount in the cockpit too, including the teak coamings, so I anticipate that section will take at least as long as the forward section. But at least I'm making progress and she looks pretty good.

There are a lot of other things I still need to do, but I don't know now many of them I'll be able to tackle before I'm forced to put her in the water and sail South. I do have to trim the mast first, and mount the stove, etc., but everything else can wait. However, once she's ready and I'm waiting on the weather to leave, I'll see how much else I can get done. I just need to do one at a time and make sure each task doesn't take too long, e.g., less than a couple of days.

Zoe watch:

I've been really tired lately, so I figured we'd walk down early and have a nice dinner and get back to the boat before the thunderstorms hit. However, we'd only been at the bar for a few minutes and hadn't even had a chance to order when the waitress knocked over a glass of wine and soaked Zoe. It pretty much hit her right on the top of her head, and when she shook it off, it went all over me.

I don't know how common this is, but I've been soaked by waitresses several times myself, and it isn't fun. I'll have to write about them sometime, but worst was on a winter evening at an outdoor French cafe with my friends Laurent and Annick. It was the girl's first day, and she dropped an entire tray of drinks all over me; I thought I was going to get hypothermia, but since a couple of them were pastis, at least I smelled good. Later, she spilled piping hot moules frites down the back of the dress of a woman sitting near us -- at that point, I felt lucky.

Anyway, I cleaned off Zoe with a towel and we left. She got a bath as soon as we got home. Thankfully, it wasn't cold out. She's fine, but with all the commotion, I ended up not eating at all -- had to get the boat ready for the storms, and was so tired, we went to bed early. Feel better today, but still tired.