Friday, October 31, 2008

Now showing on You Tube

I've been stuck at the house taking hundreds of calls from our customers now that the book is being distributed. The calls range from requests to do telephone antique appraisals to complaints about typos and mistakes made in this publication.

Do I let this get me down? Hell no.

I have my four guitars (actually 3-1/2 guitars- I share one), synthesizers of all kinds, digital loopers, computers, video cameras, digital cameras, scanners, microphones...

Although I'm stuck at home, I can reach out and boogie online.
One of my favorite compositions (not mine, though) is called Oceano. This is my spontaneous arrangement, accompanied by film and photos from our sailing trips in Mexico. I play all the instruments. Hope you like.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

So far it works great!

Had to drag the dink down to the marina and splash it for a test. The plastic trash bag I put on it peeled away cleanly and left a nice smooth surface.

Two things I noticed: the boat moves faster at low rpm and there's no more splash over from the wake. Yaaa! I zoomed out to BLISS on the mooring and found one of the mooring lines loose and reattached it. Tomorrow I'll go out and do a better job of it, since there will be a norther on Friday, and I'll probably be in Errorzona that day. I still have the wheels to mount and bottom paint to apply on the dinghy, but so far, so good.

The Three Dollar Cure





It's been awhile since I've been able to do much anything else but the Guidebook for the past few weeks, but now it's mostly done and I'm back doing some modifications to our 7-1/2 ft Livingston dinghy.

Over the past few days I've sanded, primed and sprayed new white gelcoat on the hull.
Now I'm adding some additional flotation between the almas near the stern- I hope to accomplish two things with this work: A) When I'm motoring at any speed, the water climbs up the transom and splashes into the boat. I hope that lifting the stern will eliminate the problem; and B) This little boat is really heavy for it's size, so I'll be adding wheels to the stern so I can roll it up on the beach when I get to shore, rather than dragging the thing over sand and rocks. The added buoyancy should help offset the weight of the wheels... or I may have wheels ...and water sloshing over the stern as well. I dunno.

To accomplish the task, I bought a block of stryofoam 2'x2'x6" at the local hardware store for about $3. (They use it as a building material here). I used a small handsaw and my secret weapon to shape and smooth the foam to fit the space. My secret weapon is an inline air powered sander with 40 grit sandpaper. It uses sheets 2"x2' and does a fast clean job of shaping styrofoam. I glued the styro in with West Systems Epoxy and adhesive filler and let it set up overnight. This morning I sanded it smooth and cut a piece of heavy fiberglass roving to cover it, mixed up some more epoxy and wetted the cloth in place using a 3" paint roller. I wandered back out to take the pictures when I noticed the cloth lifting off the foam. Yikes! I dodged back into the house and grabbed a white kitchen garbage bag, slit it down one side and spread it over the work. I was able to smooth the fabric down and squeegee out the trapped air with my hand, and I'm leaving the bag in place until it cures enough to peel it off... if it will peel off. Guess we'll find out later, huh?

Feels good to be doing boat stuff again!