Dreams, Rainbows, and Noodle Arms

I think the reason why I only have you two guys reading this site is because I don't cater enough to dreams. It seems that the people that read these sites are dreamers. For that matter, so are the guys that write these sites! I should address all that crap about freedom and waves and those goddamn dolphins splashing along with the boat (get outada way, dammit!). You that read this blog living your miserable little existence and don't want to know that my boatbuilding is a worse miserable little existence. You want to know that someone is fulfilling their desires and escaping, living a better miserable little existence. We do not want to know that our dreams can go awry in a flash like some errant throwback Hemingwayesque Bwana dentist lion hunter. We want rainbows and unicorns (as long as you keep them away said armed dentists). Maybe at this point in my life I've fulfilled too may dreams and given up on most. The dreams change because the person changes. We know that nuthin' is forever. Here it goes! We worked on the boat hard all this week knowing that soon our mighty ship will be sailing to exotic shores with waiting willing wahines (linguines??)  (I'm gonna barf!).

I spent some time shaping the gaffs. The one's that hold up the sails, not the one's about dentists, although I did both. I know that someday they will be guiding the sails on epic voyages to exotic places. My head is spinning. I feel slightly diabetic from all this sweetness! 

I spent two days in the hundred degree heat holding a sander chest high and above my head until my arms felt like wet noodles in the bottom of a bowl of ramen. In my head I dreamed of sailing the 8 seas (7??? 9???) in my wonderful home built catamaran. Venturing forth visiting exotic continents, like Yirrop and Aunt Arctica and eating ramen in it's native habitat. I have to stop a bit and breathe into a brown paper bag, this is getting to me.

On the port side of the port hull (port o' port). Ben had put an extra coat of epoxy because  that side was in the sun and the glass was starting to deteriorate. This extra epoxy would heat up in the sanding process and pill up in clumps, necessitating stopping every 30 seconds to flick off these pills of epoxy. Hey they look like a chart of the Galapagos islands. We will be sailing our intrepid vessel there some day with happy happy smiles on our faces.

Remember those blocks Ben made a while back? Me either. Anyway we glued screwed (tattooed?), and glassed them to the bottom of the stern (that's the back of the boat, not our demeanor). we also worked glassing the hinge notches. These notches will support the hinges that will guide our dreamy boat through dreamy seas to dreamy ports in dreamy lands.

Ben worked a Bit on fillet clean up. I am getting technical, folks. So...... fillet frustration on the starboard hull. We had mixed the epoxy and thickened it. Then we piped it and shaped it. The problems came when the hull and epoxy heated up the bubbles in the epoxy and they expanded and they worked their way to the surface causing bubble bulges in the fillets. It turns out the knuckle did the same so Ben attacked them with a utility knife and wallowed them out to fill with excess epoxy. Then came the great port hull disaster.........................

It was hot (duh) and we were going to put the fillets under the port hull gunwale. Things got slowed down, the weather got hot. Ben mixed the epoxy stiff and we applied it.

Sanded first.

Cram the mixed epoxy into a sandwich baggie while dreaming about foreign ports and squeeze it into the hull/gunwale interstitial void and........shape it and........

It started to sag!

It's hard to see the sagginess in this photo with your vision obscured by the gauze of dreaminess. That bulge at the bottom of the fillet is the sag. So we scraped it off and added more fumed silica (anti-sag) to the mix and re applied the mix to the gunwales and........

It was stiffer..... it still sagged. By then, the epoxy was gone off and we scraped it off and threw it away! Ben cleaned it up with alcohol. Ben was dreaming of pouring gasoline on the boat and burning it. He actually said "I hate epoxy". He's preaching to the choir on that one!

Thursday, it rained. We did the tarp hokey pokey for the first time in 40 odd days since it rained the last time.

Friday we got lazy and went into town. Saturday, we took the Potter out and sailed, dreaming of bigger boats and bigger seas.

OK... I give up, my stomach cannot take all this dreaming crap. I'll settle for you two guys that read this. Please don't send any sappy comments about achieving friggin' dreams.,.......or dolphins!

The Music♪: Jamie Leonhart, "Rainbow Connection"

There's your damn rainbow. Written by K.T. Frog!