June 28, 2010

During the week I tried my hand at worming, parcelling and serving line. It's part of my experiment with my anchor snubber/bridle. One of the reasons I made it out of three-strand line was to try using this old traditional method of chafe prevention to protect the line where it goes through the hawse holes in the bulwark. The worming was simple enough, and I used the recommended friction tape for the parcelling. The hardest part was finding the old-fashioned friction tape. I had to stop at that point because it was clear that I would need to use a serving mallet or board to make it feasible to serve the line. Since you can't exactly pick up a serving mallet at Home Despot or Worst Marine, I would have to make one. After doing some head-scratching for a few days, I think I've come up with simple approach to putting one together that, although crude, should work. Stay tuned. I'll also post photos of the process for those who haven't a clue what worming, parcelling and serving is.

The weekend was a confirmation that sailing is indeed only for people who don't know how to sand. Even though it was the second hottest day of the season, I had to prep the bow this weekend so it could be professionally sprayed while I was down in LA visiting Carol next week. I also needed to scribe the water line before it becomes invisible after the yard sands down the bottom paint during my absence. My first challenge was finding scaffolding to get me up high enough to reach the area I had to sand. Although the yard has plenty of stands and boards, they all seemed to be in use. I finally found one stand and a couple of boards back in the North Forty, and begged another stand from a neighbor. Once I got the scaffolding up, I masked off the area to be sanded, mixed up a batch of two part acrylic glazing compound, affectionately known as Bondo, and filled the dings on the starboard bow. While the filler hardened, I went around the hull and scribed a series of short lines to mark the waterline using my little battery powered Makita circular saw. It was just the ticket.

For the next six hours I sanded, filled, sanded, filled, sanded, filled, and then sanded some more. First 220 grit, then 320. It got so hot that the Bondo would kick off before I could get up the scaffolding and fill the dings with it. I finally had to stick it in the store freezer for a while just to cool it down enough to use it.It was hot, sticky, dusty work, but I got it done. A shower and change of clothes helped a lot. I was glad I had air conditioning in my truck as I began the 90-minute drive to Sacramento where it was 101.