No Splash This Week

It finally dried out enough yesterday afternoon to start caulking, and even though I rigged up a light and caulked well after dark, I wasn't even able to finish the toerail, much less the handrails and portholes. It turned cold again today, so I'm not sure how much I can get done over the next few days, but I definitely won't be going into the water this week.

I've got the heater going, all the lights on, and the kerosene lantern lite in an effort to warm her up, but the high today is only 56. I think I can still caulk at that temp, but would prefer it was a little warmer. I finished the port toerail, but only got half the outboard edge of the starboard one done. I should be able to do the inboard edge this morning, but since I have to raise the cover to finish the outboard edge, I might let that go for a while. However, that side faces South, so if the sun comes out, I'll go ahead and do it.

In addition to the toerail, I think I can start remounting the portholes and other hardware today. I really wanted to get the portholes in before it got cold, but figured the toerail was more important. It's too bad I got such a late start, but the humidity didn't drop below 70% until sometime after noon. I have the handrails and small portholes on deck warming up, so I'll start mounting them as soon as I'm done with the toerail. Even though the portholes do open, I'll remount the handrails first, since the larger rough opening allows better access -- I have to use a screw driver on top and a socket on the bottom to fasten them.

I also need to cut a drain channel in the bottom of the mast step before I remount it, and epoxy some damage on the top. Hopefully, I'll get to that today too. The next big job will be reinstalling the manual bilge pump in the cockpit and reattaching the exhaust hose on the engine. Once the exhaust hose is back on, I can run the engine. I need to do that soon to check her out, but as a by product, it should warm up the inside of the boat quite nicely, so I might go ahead and do that first.

Zoe watch:

She's under the boat right now. It's only 54, but I put her bed down there to keep her warmer. There's no wind and it's nice and dry this morning -- there wasn't even any dew -- so I think she'll be okay. I'll check on her later and bring her on board if she gets too cold.