New Brush

I walked up to Home Depot Saturday night around 8pm, just after dark, to pick up a new brush for tipping, more sandpaper, a bunch of rags, and some spring clamps for the cover. It's a couple miles away, so I walked Zoe first and left her on the boat. I still need to get a couple sheets of marine plywood and a bag of play sand for the non-skid. I knew I couldn't carry the plywood, but hoped to get the sand. However, the bags were 50 pounds, so I decided to wait till I can find someone with a truck to go down with me to pick up the plywood and sand together.

Sunday was a nice day, so I used the clamps to pull up the edges of the cover. I sat on the edge of the deck and used my feet to pull up the edge of the cover and roll it up to about a foot and a half above the deck and used the clamps to hold it in place. It worked great and provided enough light to allow me to finish the sanding and clean the deck before painting. The clamps also make it easy to drop the cover if it rains -- like today.

I mixed up smaller amounts this time, about pint, and used a bit more thinner, about 25%. I tried to work more quickly this time and tip with the new brush, but I still wasn't satisfied with the tipping. I tried waiting longer as Paul suggested, but that still didn't seem to work out all that well. It seemed like I either tipped too soon or too late, and in either case, wasn't able to keep a wet edge. However, it still looks pretty good, but due to the rain, there's not enough light to get a good look at it or sand, but it feels smoother.

The rain also kept me from getting much work done, but I did refill my tanks. I also started to prepare the hardware I need to remount. I replaced the old winches with new self-tailing ones, so I've been thinking about changing the way things are laid out . For one thing, I've decided not to remount any cleats on the coach roof. With the old winches, the only way to secure the line was with a cleat, but self-tailing winches secure the line themselves, so the cleat isn't needed. Also, I'd already added line stoppers to the coach roof so each winch can be used for multiple lines, so the coach roof was already too busy. Even though the jib sheet winches are dedicated, I think I'll remount those cleats anyway since they could always be used for something else.

I'll wait to make any other changes until after I've had a chance to test it out.

Zoe watch:

She spent the whole day under the boat today and is down there right now. It's raining off and on, but she's nice and dry down there. I'll walk her again in a few minutes, then bring her up for the night.