Time is running out...

The First Mate always points out that in every movie ever made, that phrase, or one very much like it, is part of the dialog. Amazing, huh?

This photo shows the point I have arrived in the reconstruction of the head (bathroom) on BLISS the boat. The walls still need some light sanding and varnish, the tile will need grout (I will probably use white silicon), the lights need to be mounted where those wires protrude, and the door for the cabinet needs to be finished. Those are all things that appear in just this photo- there's a lot more than that.

I did, however, do some things you can't see, such as replacing the water pump with a new top-of -the-line unit, and some rewiring and re-plumbing under the sink.

BLISS is currently in a slip in the marina, which is a good place to do this job, because I'm constantly running out for materials and tools and Coca-Cola. My slip rent is expensive if I don't have a deal, (see prior post), so I have to have this all finished by the end of the month when the boat is due to go back out to the mooring, or cough up some big bucks to stay.

The Work on BLISS

A few days back, a boat owner mentioned on the morning net that he wanted a mooring for a month and was subletting his slip at the marina. I called him up and we swapped my mooring for his slip. I had a credit with the marina, and with his payment for the mooring, I got Bliss into a 40 foot slip for a month for $20. A deal I couldn't pass up. 

Years ago we tried painting the plywood and plastic  laminate with enamel, which, as you can see, is peeling. The head is small, and the light paint really helped. 

So now I'm installing mahogany paneling, which I hope will lighten with the use of white wood stain. 

A couple afternoons patterning the space and cutting panels has yielded these photos. When the walls are done, I have the hatch, door and countertops to do.

Haven't decided whether to sail south this year or take the VW Westfalia camper... but around the end of the year it gets too cold to want to stick around. I follow the Seven Second Rule. If I can't get dressed in seven seconds, I'm too far north.

Today in art class...

This is the first Monday in November and the Art League of San Carlos had their first meeting of the season. I got there late, and as I sat in the only empty chair in the room, I looked around. There was one other guy in there with me and 40 or so women and everybody had some little object in front of them they had been assigned to draw. Everybody, that is, except me.

Our instructor-for-the-day Sue walked over to me and said, "I know you. You can draw. I want you to draw..." she paused, looking me up and down.. "your shoe!" And then she walked away.

The Shoe came off and went up on the table I shared with four women, each drawing their own objets d' arte: a hat, a small vase, a picture of an owl, a wire basket. No one else in the room had to remove a piece of their clothing to draw (except, perhaps, the woman with the hat). I guess I should be glad Sue didn't tell me to draw my shorts.

After an hour Sue marched over to me, swept my drawing up into the air and said, "I knew it!" She strode to the center of the room with the Shoe Sketch held aloft, showing it around. She shouted, "This Shoe was drawn with Authority!" Everybody applauded (including me) and I was returned to obscurity once again... except for two women at an adjoining table who reached over and grabbed my model, the Shoe, and placed it on their table. "You can have your shoe back when we're done with it," one of the women said. "Here," said the other, "you can try drawing our toy mice..."

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.

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!

Another piece of the puzzle

This piece of equipment is a high pressure pump I won for a great price on eBay. This pump will be driven either by a power-take off (PTO) from the new generator or by a 5-6 hp electric motor. For what, you ask?
This pump will suck seawater into the boat and push it against a semi-permeable membrane. The water that goes through the membrane is fresh clean water, the stuff that doesn't go through goes back overboard.
In this way we make fresh (drinkable) water out of ocean water. This pump, when it's all hooked up to the rest of the system will desalinate between 24 and 48 gallons of water per hour, depending on whether we use one membrane or two.
It's not quite enough to keep up with a standard showerhead (at 3.5 gallons per minute) but will fill the tanks for that shower pretty fast. The watermaker we have on BLISS now will make about 1 gallon per hour or about 2 days to fill our 50 gallon tank.