July 25, 2013

Work continued in the doghouse:  teak trim and white PlasTex side panels.  I mounted some of the trim around the skylight and refinished a couple of pieces that had runs in the varnish.  The cardboard strip method for making patterns for the side panels worked well, including the curves for the window frames.  I got much better at it by the third or fourth section.  I can already tell that when all the panels are in place and trimmed, it will really look good...a major improvement in a place where I spend a lot of time.
With a major birthday coming up in a few weeks, I thought I'd give myself a treat and start shopping for a music system for the boat.  I wanted something compact, well designed and producing good audio that would also dock my new iPhone and play music from it.  After a good deal of online research, the Geneva Model M seemed to best meet my needs.  Only problem was the price:  $699, with almost nobody offering any significant discounts.  I finally found one at, of all places, Crate and Barrel in Woodland Hills, that was being closed out for $499.  They only had one, so I thought I'd best snatch it up before it was gone (even though it wasn't yet my birthday).  Installation required a new AC circuit and outlet as well as raising the position of the fiddle on the shelf on which it was installed.  It was all worth it as it looks and sounds great.  And it's really nice to finally have music on board!

July 18, 2013

I continued work on the doghouse trim, mostly sanding and varnishing.  It's looking good and almost ready to re-mount.  I finished the little rot repair and the cardboard patterns for the starboard side liner.  Instead of an outrigger race on Saturday I crewed on a neighbor's boat in the annual Milt Ingram Trophy Race.  The race is for much more weatherly boats than his Hans Christian, and since there were only two of us, we decided to D.N.F. (along with most of the other boats in our class) after taking six hours to beat to the weather mark only 10 miles into the 42-mile race.  Ah well, I got a T-shirt out of the deal.  It was "Pirate Days" at the harbor this weekend too, so there was more than the normal amount of lost tourists, excited kids and clueless kayakers.  Some nice sunsets were nice compensation.

July 11, 2013

Drove down to LA on Sunday so I could do a photo shoot for Piano Spheres, one of Carol's clients, on Monday. While I had hoped to make a lot of progress this week in finishing the trim for the doghouse overhead, the threat of rain cut that effort short.  I did manage to put the final coat of paint on the plywood locker doors, sand the overhead trim and  then get a coat of penetrating epoxy and two coats of Epifanes RapidCoat applied.  Looks pretty nice already.  With the varnishing aborted, I turned my attention to improving the crude plywood liner inside the hard dodger.After quite a bit of head-scratching, I decided it would be better to laminate a new surface rather than try to fill and paint the existing plywood.  The tricky part would be making a very precise pattern.  I decided to try poster board which could be cut into strips as well as curves and could be easily glued together.  A small test section was done as proof of concept.  Worked fine.  I found some nice 1/8 inch matte white plastic sheeting that should work nicely as the new surface.  Before the new surface could be applied, though, I needed to remove the caulk fillets around the perimeter of the plywood.  A test run with my multi-tool saw made a quick job of it.  Unfortunately, it also revealed a small area of rot, which I have started repairing.  Finally, I started removing the old decayed varnish from the teak trim strip on the back of the hard dodger.  It's all a lot of work, but I think it's going to look very nice when it's done.  With so much time spent in that space, it will be worth it.

July 5, 2013

A long weekend trek to San Diego for an outrigger race and the July 4th holiday conspired to reduce productivity this week.  With the teak trim in the doghouse freshly sanded and varnished, the old paint on the inner plywood side panels looked pretty shabby, so most of the week's work was devoted to restoring them:  filling, sanding, filling again, sanding, priming, sanding, priming, sanding, painting, wet-sanding and painting again.  They now have two coats of Brightside Hatteras Off-white on them, and look much better.  They need at least one more coat though.

In addition, I very methodically removed and marked the many pieces of trim I had cut and mounted to finish off the new overhead in the doghouse.  It will take some time sanding and applying many coats of varnish before they can be re-installed.