Caturday: Working on our boat... I hear raindrops!

Just about ready to get to work on the boat after another cup of coffee.

A friend of ours recommended the song "Working On My Boat." I quite enjoy it. You can listen to a sample HERE.

We have had 3 days in a row without rain and have been able to do some exterior epoxy work. We plan to do a bit more this morning.

What's that I hear? The pitter patter of cat paws on the deck? No, it is raining! Oh well, it is only 9am so maybe the weather will improve.

It's Caturday! Here's a picture of Willow being too cool for the room :)

They are having great fun this morning chasing each other to and fro... much frolicking...

Let the sunshine in!

---

---

Time to catch up

It's been awhile since my last post. There's so much catch-up to do that it makes one put it off... tu sais?

So, here It Goes...

Yesterday was Canada Day.  Today is Territory Day in the BVIs and then, of course, Sunday is July 4th, US Independence Day, which will be followed by taking Monday off as well, if you can swing it!

The mast is ON the boat

At the beginning of last week, we started making preparations to move the mast out of the parking lot (and away from Mr P's special moods) and onto the boat. On Wednesday, we were prepared for the two of us to drag the mast to the dock using a cart or handtruck, but SURPRISE we had four guys who came to help. (Thanks to Jim the carpenter, Mark with the new kitten, Mystic Mark, and the other dude). It was quite easy (especially for me as I just looked out for traffic) to carry the mast over to the boardwalk in Christiansted. We waited for the day-excursion boats to finish up and move off, and then we upped anchor and went to the dock.

I am so happy with our Electric Yacht electric motor. I skillfully guided the boat up to the dock with nary a bump or a shucky-darn :)  I'm looking forward to when they will offer a remote control, as then I won't have to do any unpleasant bending to "give it some gas" or shift, and lose sight of where I'm going. This will be available soon, I hope... HINT HINT!

We invited our helpers to meet us the next day at the Brew Pub for Thirsty Thursday for $10 pitchers of their special microbrewery beer, as well as some excellent chicken wings (my favorite is the teriyaki).  Nobody showed up but we managed to celebrate all by ourselves just fine. Their loss...

After placing the mast on the boat in their crutches, we then proceded out of the mooring field where we were anchored in Christiansted Harbor and out to the Gallows Bay area and picked up one of the transient mooring balls. It has the tendency to be a bit more rolly at times but it is SO QUIET.  Wow, I feel free!

We're far from the maddening crowds, out of the fishbowl, away from the noisy and smelly seaplane... We stay dry while going into town and might get wet on the way back, which is a big improvement to getting wet on the way to town at the beginning of the journey :)  If the conditions are a bit too rolly for some precision thing we want to do, no problem... we'll just drop the mooring line, switch on the motor, and whirrrrrr over to a calmer patch of water.

Then there's always the motorboats who never think about the wake they are making or don't give a hoot...

But, it's really not too bad... Just the occasional one that causes the glass on the table to crash to the floor... And then there's the pair of them that cause a humungus roll at 6:00am. I guess they just want to get us out of bed since they're up... Am I starting to rant :)

So, that's enough about that... On to battery chargers...

Our 12V battery charger is on the fritz (poor Fritz).  This Xantrex 2-20-40amp unit has always been a problem since Day 1. When on 40 amps, it overheats and only runs half the time, so we've always used it on the 20-amp setting.  I mentioned this to Budget Marine in St Maarten the same week that we bought it and they really weren't interested in my problem.  A few days ago, it started overheating at the 20-amp setting due to the fan no longer working.  I have placed a portable fan to blow into it and I think this might help, but it is still shutting off and thus taking a long long time to charge the batteries.

Bob has had his eye on a 60-amp charger that he's found recommended by several cruisers on the internet which works well with a Honda 2000i generator. But, as we wanted one NOW and also to avoid big shipping charges, we decided to get something locally.... Not going to happen!

We first went out to the Do-It Caribe hardware store and they were out. Then we walked to NAPA who were completely sold out and didn't know when they were getting more. We tried the Sears/Kmart store... nope.  We then went to Kmart and no joy there either.  So we hiked over to Cost-U-Less where they had generators, inverters, and jumper cables, but no battery chargers. The next day we tried Ace Hardware. When I phoned they said they had LOTS of chargers.  In reality they only had a 2-amp trickle charger and a large charger on wheels. They said that they are supposed to be getting a container the next day so there might be some out on the shelf next week. Not much good to us now, though. So, back to the boat.

Bob did a bit of internet shopping and found the recommended charger that he's been wanting all along from a place in Oregon. The store quickly responded to his emails and understood the special PayPal problems that sometime occur when dealing with addresses in the USVI... He would make sure the address label was correct before sending the package. Shipping via USPS Priority Mail was only $10.70. It would be wonderful if we receive it today as I assume Monday will be a holiday.  But, if not, we'll limp along with what we have. [It didn't come today, hopefully Tuesday]

Which brings me to a future project of building our own wind generator.  Bob is currently researching this and coming up with a parts list... and then we'll add this to The List. Watch this space and BoatBits, of course!

Mast update

Still haven't received our 3-gallon epoxy order...

We have moved stuff out of Jerry's shop and are moving things out of the parking lot.  We are thinking up cunning plans on how the two of us can move the mast to the dock so we can place it on So It Goes and finish it on the boat.

Ordered a used (very good) staysail from Baconsails.com yesterday.

Mr Zip on Vacation? Active "summer" season

Yesterday (Wednesday) we received our mast's "sock" in the mail. This was shipped Priority Mail on Friday so it seemed to me that we should have received our 3-gallon epoxy kit that we ordered last Tuesday.  I called up RAKA and they said it had been sent but they had a problem at the post office.  The postal employee said it couldn't be shipped via Priority Mail which is odd because they did it 3 weeks ago and many other times, so it is coming First Class. He said we should get it by Friday, but we'll see...

Maybe Mr Zip's vacation replacement just wasn't hip on such things... Probably doesn't even know that he missed Towel Day a couple of weeks ago :)

So It Goes...

On another front... As you probably know, "they" have forecasted that this will be an above-average, super-hyperactive summer season for those sorts of storms. I don't like to use the H-word.

Yesterday, Bob posted the 2005 storm map on BoatBits which had 28 named storms.  I was happy to see that none of the tracks were in our area of the Caribbean.  Check it out!

This morning's Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog reports on the seasonal h*cane forecast issued June 2, 2010 by Dr. Phil Klotzbach and Dr. Bill Gray of Colorado State University (CSU).

So It Goes...

Tuesday was a "two fer"

The sky did not look promising at all on Tuesday afternoon.  In fact, it looked a lot like it did in the morning... GRAY.

But, it didn't rain.  It didn't rain all day which is great because we were able to apply the second layer of glass to the mast.

We were scraping the bottom of the barrels with the epoxy :)  I was surprised that the pumps still worked with less than an inch of resin in the bottles. That was great.  For the last batch of epoxy, I had to decant the resin and hardner into their own cups, then measure using a syringe.  Had enough epoxy plus a bit left over!  We should be getting another 3 gallons in the mail today.

The sock material was sent Friday so that should be popping up anytime soon, too.

Happy day.

Two for Tuesday???

We hope to apply the second layer of biaxial cloth today.  We have applied one 12" strip and hope to do the other, weather willing.

We woke up to a solid one-tone gray sky.  No clouds... just solid gray.

We decided to go and get some water and gasoline.  Gasoline has gone up to $3.45/gallon at St.Croix Marine, from $3.20.  Diesel is $3.19/gallon and if you buy more than 500 gallons of diesel (cash) the price is $3.03.  There is a further discount if you buy more than 1000 gallons. Someone who just passed through Bermuda told us it was almost US$4.00 per LITER.

After returning to the boat it still looked like possible rain.

Quite often it will look like this and nothing ever happens... although usually more often than not, it will rain.

So, we went for it !

It took about an hour...

We will wait for another half hour (3:30pm) and go see if we can turn the mast over and complete this second layer of glass.

Finger's crossed!

Another epoxy tip:  When working with epoxy, try not to drip sweat into the epoxy.

Monday Memorial Day

There were only a few drops of rain last night.  Not enough for Buffy to come inside.

This morning we went and put on another 12" strip of biax cloth. We were going to come back in an hour or so to start on another 12" strip but it rained about 10 minutes after returning to the boat... of course! But we weren't too worried that it would cause any problems.

After checking out the remains of Ace Hardware's tent sale, it looked like it was going to rain some more so we just went back to the mast and put the tarp over it.  Right now, sun is streaming through the ports although the sky still looks like potential rain.  Hope we'll do the carbon tows and the 2nd layer of biaxial cloth tomorrow (Tuesday).

Here's a photo of Woo from the boat s/v Love Inn. Woo and his friend Bob were visiting Jerry at the shop.  He really likes the wind from the fan... his fur was flying all over, wish I took a video.

Hope you are having an excellent holiday weekend.

Sunny Sunday

It was a sunny Sunday and we went to the yard at 1pm and prepared the mast and got the first 12" wide strip of biaxial fiberglass applied.

Hopefully, Monday morning we will turn the mast over and do the in-between strip which is probably 9" wide... Run some carbon tows and then apply a 12" strip of biax.  Then in the afternoon, turn the mast run some carbon tows down that part, and do the other "fill in the gap piece" which will make for two layers of cloth.

Hope the "tube sock" will arrive on Tuesday, but I'd really be surprised if they have even mailed it yet... It should make finishing the mast easier.

That's the plan... we'll see how it goes :)

Saturday Showers... Rain, that is!

Just went outside and took some photos of Christiansted Harbor, St Croix

When will this let up? Can't glass the mast in this weather... So It Goes

Thursday RAIN and more coming

Lots of rain...

Tuesday - Rain - Did internet work and went shopping

Wednesday - There were a few dimples to top up after filling in the grooves from the other day.  Got about 3/4 done before it started raining.

Today, Thursday... Heavy RAIN this morning.  They have forecasted Flash Flood Warnings through Saturday evening.

I long for the workshops where we built the Mooses.  Notwithstanding what some local people think (especially Mr. P), we could have completed our mast project within two weeks. Eight to ten hour days in an indoor, lighted, dry workshop that would be large enough to build both halves at the same time.  Easy-Peasy... Pas de problème

Maybe I should put on "Here Comes the Sun" by the George Harrison...

Another Monday Mast Madness

It's Monday, again... Can you believe that May is almost over??? Next weekend is Memorial Day.

So, today we had hoped to apply the external biaxial cloth  but we basically just did prep work.

Bob cleaned up yesterday's groove filling work with the shurform and then sanded the mast.  It takes time to do a 37-ish foot mast :)

Then we set up the sawhorses to support the mast for the glassing stage of the project. Had to level it, etc, and clean up the surrounding work area so we wouldn't be tripping over scrap wood while working.

Once that was finished, it was really too late in the afternoon to start with the next step. But, while I was out buying a 2-litre bottle of Coke and a Snickers, Bob was drawing out our boom. We be multitasking :)

Sunday - Filling the grooves & chickens

Well, Sunday was another productive day!

We filled in the remaining grooves in the mast.  There are a few dimples to deal with, but that stage is now finished... HURRAY!

The water was very calm when we returned to the boat and we had a nice soak after a soggy day of working on the mast... Followed by a Guinness and salty soy nuts!

Monday, if all goes well, we plan to apply the first layer of biaxial fibreglass to the outside of the mast.

There are a lot of chicken stories on various blogs today, such as this one from Crooks and Liars, so here's mine :)

Saw a new hen with 4 tiny chicks running about the work area on Sunday. They are still a bit shy. Can you spot all 4?

Saturday started good...

We were off to a pretty good start on Saturday morning.  We left the boat at 10am.  We only had a tiny bit of rain last night and the plastic tarp was still on the mast.  Great!

While I was cleaning out the plastic pots used for yesterday's epoxy, Bob had a visitor stop by and chat for awhile about this and that.

So, we turned over the mast and wetted out those grooves that didn't get it yesterday, with clear epoxy.

(Kerry, Bob's Promenade shirt just isn't going to survive this project.  This is our last shirt but they served us well!)

Then I started making the epoxy filler goop with my magic powders. I knew that we don't have enough colloidal silica to finish this part of the project (darn!) and will have to buy some more today locally, but I forgot to bring over the 2 bags of wood flour that we have on the boat, so we won't get to work as long as we wanted to before stopping for lunch.

Here's Bob feeling groovy... Getting into the groove?  Sorry, just had to get that in there some how :)

This is my little work area. The table is too low and I have to bend over to add fillers to the pots which is quite a strain after a couple of hours of constant mixing, but as I've said many times, I'm thankful for what we've got.

The other day I bought some Playtex dishwashing gloves (they were difficult to find!). I actually prefer them to the blue disposable gloves that you can see in the photo above.  We have to go over to Ace Hardware (if it's not raining) and see if they have some.

Epoxy tip:

• When I put the epoxy bottles away for the day, I put an old glove on the each pump with a finger going over the spout. Then, if somehow the pump gets depressed or if there's a change in atmospheric pressure, the leaked resin or hardener will be contained.

Looks like it might not rain!  Maybe we can go to the store and get a bit more work done but I expect we'll get back too late.  So It Goes...


We bought some colloidal silica from the local marine store (which was a dollar cheaper than Ace).  For WEST System, it was over $23 for 5.5 oz. We need it now, so we bought it. Tomorrow we'll make another order to RAKA where colloidal silica is $10.75 for an 8 oz bag.

Mast project makes progress

Friday was a very nice day and we took full advantage of it.  We worked from 10am to 5:30pm.  This is hard work, especially since the mast is out in the open with no shade.

Bob planed the mast a bit more and then made wooden handles for sandpaper for a belt sander to manually sand the mast.  I'm impressed as this was coarse paper and really took a lot of effort.  Three or four passes of a 37-ish foot mast is quite a distance!

Most of this was done while I went to feed the cats, check email, and get some take-out lunch for us.

Then, using an air compressor, we blew out the grooves.

Afterwards, we filled in at least 1/3 of the grooves with a thickened epoxy mixture. My camera was wanting new batteries, so no pictures.  I'll take a couple of pictures of the same thing today though... lots of opportnities to do so, except to find the time.  I can't quite keep up with making the filling compound to Bob's application of it... So It Goes...

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

We have made some progress on the mast project... HURRAY!

Monday was a non-work day. It had rained heavily Sunday night and was still raining Monday morning. We took advantage of the bad mast-building weather and took the bus (well, it was an hour late so we took a $2.50 bus-taxi) up to Sunny Isle to buy some cat food and kitty litter, plus some stuff for us. On the way to the dinghy we picked up our mail (epoxy & glass tape) and stayed on the boat as we didn't get back until after 3pm.

Tuesday afternoon (rain delay again) we fitted the two mast sections and Bob did some planing.

Yesterday, Wednesday, Bob did a bit more planing and then it was time to put them together!

Planed some

Ran Kevlar strands down the interior, then wetted out with epoxy

Applied glue and clamped with "Spanish windlasses"

Glueing up a 35-ish foot mast in the sun without any epoxy going off was quite an accomplishment and I'm going to award us a Gold Star.

Well done!

I almost kept up with making the epoxy glue mixture to Bob's application of the goop. I try to use new pots and mixing sticks for each batch to help keep us cleaner, plus there won't be any old mixture accelerating the working time of the new stuff.  When you are in a rush it is easy to not stir the mixture long enough,  but fortunately there was a clock on the wall with a very slowly moving second hand which helped tremendously.

It is taking us longer than our estimated two weeks' building time.  This is because we did not factor in the limitations of building it outside in a parking lot.  We are thankful for this workspace, but if we had a "proper" space we could have built both halves at once, be able to work whatever the weather, had proper storage space for everything associated with the project, everything would be stored indoors and out of the wet, etc. Plus, we could work on building a dinghy while waiting for epoxy to kick on the mast....  But, you take what you can get :)

Epoxy tip:  When starting for the day, pump the resin into another resin bottle so the pump is properly primed.  Same thing for the hardener.  If you don't do this, the first pump may spit as "contents may settle" due to change in atmospheric pressure or gravity or elves or something...

Another epoxy tip:  After pressing the pumps down (especially for the hardener) keep a bit of pressure on the pump as you let it back up.  If it comes up too fast, there's the possibility that it won't fill properly and your next batch will not contain the proper resin-to-hardener ratio.  I hope I explained that OK :)

Time to get going!

Wonderful Weather Wednesday

We had wonderful weather on Wednesday and most of Thursday. It was dry through late yesterday evening... Then it rained off and on all night and really heavy once.  This morning it has continued to rain off and on. It was very gray when I was making coffee.  The sun did peek out and now it is humid.

Even if it doesn't rain anymore today, it will still be a few hours before we can do anything so perhaps we should take advantage of the crappy weather and do some needed food shopping.

Wednesday we arranged all the strips in the mast mold into good positions (no two scarf joins side by side, for instance) and we let it sit and relax into its new orientation (some of these thin strips like to take on various artistic curves). We also had visitors drop by and chat (which was nice) so we didn't do as much as we had hoped.

Thursday was another fine day. At noontime we tacked the mast together with 5 strips of cloth. We returned later in the afternoon to apply the layer of glass to the interior of the mast half #2.  Didn't finish until it got dark, but it was good.  Lots of lizards came out to feed on the mosquitos that were feeding on us :)

We will zip over there soonish and see what's up and then continue up to the mall.

A dinghy zipped by the boat a few minutes ago and Buffy chased it down the side deck.  Our little watchcat!  Willow wants to play with her string :)

Happy Friday!

Torrential Tuesday

I'm very disappointed with the way this morning has started.  Last night we had bouts of heavy rain and some strong winds that I hoped would dry the clothes I washed yesterday and hung on the lifelines. This morning the cycle has continued. Rain, Rain GO AWAY!

Just started raining again.  Darn! Stop it!

Yesterday I did two loads of laundry at the Prince Street Laudromat. This is the laundromat over by the Seaplane.  It is very easy to get to and I have never seen it crowded. I probably could have put all my clothes in the large triple-load machine for $5 rather than use the two double-load machines for $3.50, but I didn't realize this until it was too late... next time :)

Prince Street Laundromat - Christiansted, St Croix USVI

You can read directions of how to get there in a previous posting... CLICK HERE for STX info.

When I was walking back to the worksite with the laundry (about two blocks), I ran into Bob who was coming to help carry the wet clothes back.  Wasn't that wonderful?  So nice...

I was surprised to see that he had popped the mast out of the mold.  Oooh, how cool!

The extra glass we had applied on Sunday was just fine as it didn't rain until two hours after we had left for the day.

Today will be another one of those "play it by ear" type of days... So It Goes...

More May Mast Madness

Well, yesterday was a pretty nice day in St Croix, USVI. We made a bit more progress with the mast building.

We put some carbon fiber glass tape in a couple of places...

and then we applied another layer of biaxial fiberglass to the top and bottom of the mast.

Fun stuff!

Two hours after returning back to the boat we had a heavy, 3-minute downpour to be followed throughout the afternoon with short, light rain showers. We had a nice breeze which would dry out the rain overnight, but then it rained again, of course, this morning.

Please, give us a break!  We want to get out of here ASAP, go to St Martin to take care of a few things, and get out of this area.  Reading crownweather.com's Outlook for the 2010 Hurricane Season is a great incentive (besides wanting to be a sailboat again!). The post starts with this paragraph:

I decided to write up an update to the seasonal forecast I wrote back in early March.  I am very concerned that we’re in for a very, very busy hurricane season. 

Shucky darn... So It Goes...

Happy May!

Time is flying by...

This week we received 5 sheets of plywood. Not the quality that we are used to, but you take what you can get :)

We made a dinghy kit... unfortunately, elves are not included...

We'd like to thank the nice folks over at Island Flight Adventure for allowing us to use one of their trailers as a table.  It is a BIG help and we really appreciate it. As a cruiser, we normally don't care for jet skis, but this outfit is different. They do not buzz about the boats at anchor.  How cool is that! You can rent a jet ski and go out with one of their guides on a fantastic tour, or perhaps you'd rather go out on their boat and do some fishing, take a harbor tour, or maybe waterski or tubing.  They are conveniently located on the Christiansted Boardwalk near Styxx. If you don't see them, just ask! Island Flight Adventure's phone number is 340-778-7541 or CLICK for their website.

Seems like it will be a nice day.  We could hear the announcer from the Ironman Triathalon so they must have been doing the swimming portion.

Looking forward to going over and start work on the mast.

Have a great day!

Surprise, it's raining!

At least yesterday (Sunday) it only rained a couple of drops very early in the morning.  We did make a bit of progress on our mast and we were looking forward to doing some major work today.

The weather forecast on the radio said that we might get a bit of slight showers today (it's really pouring) but probably not as a high pressure system is moving in and it should be dry for at least Tuesday and Wednesday.... I've heard that before...

Shucky-Darn !!!

Maybe we'll go up to the Do-It-Best Caribe hardware store by Sunny Isle shopping center and ask about some plywood.  I called them on Saturday to ask about delivery but it was definitely not the A-team (I hope!) that answered. It is usually best to ask in person and to weekday staff.

So it goes...