Rain right, A Glimpse of the Budge Pod Mod and a Loudon Schlep

Thanks for the vote of confidence from Jake and Sergey for the green paint! That means some of my two readers approve of the color.

 A week cut short by horribibble rainstorms terminated the week's work progress on Wednesday. This was not attributed to the spinney thing in Mexico, but to something coming from the northwest. The spinney thing is supposed to miss. Budge finished up the foredeck by the application of non skid to the deck.

 First, mask off the area with tape in the areas you want unslippery. Imagine standing on deck and the weather is interesting. Ya want ta stay there.

Then apply a coat of paint and shake some sort of gritty stuff into the wet paint. Budge tried two methods: shake dry grit into wet paint (the coverage was more uneven) and mix dry grit into wet paint and paint it on. That is the method we will probably use in the future.

Shake that grit!

Peel tape. Then paint a final top coat over the entire surface.

Looks good. Then Budge and ben attacked the next section of the decks.

Sand, of course. A lot, of course.

Discover bad epoxy spots and

Grind away bad epoxy.

Fill in all the depressions, divots, dings and dips. with epoxy,

Then lay a coat of glass over the deck.

Saturate the cloth with epoxy.

And apply a fairing coat of thickened epoxy. After all the hull preparation we also.................

 Put on a coat of bottom paint to the lower hull. Visual progress for the third week running! Wuhu! We can't keep this up, folks...... This is not the final color of the bottom paint, but an indicator color for the top coat to be applied later (black). When you see red showing through, time to recoat. One gallon of paint did both hulls.

Everyone helped, even Grin and Bear It.

Even me.

Arms hurt! Keep hair out of paint......oh, never mind.

Rudders, too.

Put tape on..................peel tape off.

This is the (semi) official (this week) Budge pod modification for all the Tiki 38 builders out there! First, drop the floor enough to allow standing room. Second, lose the watch bunk bulkhead (seating will allow a bunk area). Third, move the steering station back behind the third beam and put in some storage boxes (dotted lines) at floor level Why is he not smiling? Must be some dolphins in the way. I took a better picture when it wasn't raining, but it disappeared. Tweaking will come, but it's a concept. On Wednesday, Ben and I wandered up to Dallas to a Loudon Wainright III concert. Fantastic! If you have a chance to see him, by all means, go! More progress next week if it stops raining!

The Music♫: The Nelson Brothers "Garden Party"

Singing their dad's song. What happens to young pop stars when they mature?