Thursday, 12 November 2015 - The boat works had three men working on the boat today, at times. Two fellows finished replacing the last bold in the stem plate, then one of them cleaned up the anchor locker and fiberglassed the board that had had to be removed in order to get far enough up in the bow to replace the bolts. Tomorrow, he's supposed to paint the anchor locker. When he finished fiberglassing, he finished replacing the bolts in the rudder gudgeon. I now have shiny new bronze bolts instead of stainless steel. The gudgeon was bronze, so the bolts should be, too. Actually, the one bolt who's head had twisted off was the only bad one of the batch, but you couldn't tell until they were removed, and you can only remove one at a time because of the weight of the rudder. As he was finishing that job, two others started sanding the bottom of the boat for painting.
                I worked almost all day inventorying and filling out the database for one more small space behind the starboard settee that has lots of lubricants, adhesives, etc. in it. I did get one break. The lady that create vinyl lettering for boats called and said that mine was ready. I've decided to install it myself, and rather than going to get it at rush hour, I did it just before noon.

Friday the 13th, November 2015 - I reposted the ad for the trailer on Craigslist this morning, then headed over to the boat works. Jorge was painting the anchor locker and after he finished, I went to inspect it. Yesterday, he had ground off some of the old fiberglass that held the vertical separator between the two compartments, then sanded the panel and walls a bit, and in the process much of that stuff fell to the bottom of the locker, covering the drain hole. He had been working with a vacuum, so I assumed that he had cleaned out the debris, but he had not and painted over it this morning. I made him aware of the situation, so I'm sure he'll open the drain hole before painting the second coat. In general, so far, these guys are doing an excellent job.
                I had also noticed that some water had drained out of the bottom of the keel, so I had them take a closer look at that. They'll have to put the boat on the lift again to do that fiberglassing late this afternoon. That will let the fiberglass set up over the weekend, but will keep me off the boat until Monday morning because they can't allow anyone on board while it is on the lift. Currently, it sits on two thick wooden blocks as they work on it. I had hoped to get some more of the inventory / database filled in this weekend. Perhaps I should go windsurfing. Oh, yeah. I don't have any sailboard gear anymore! Bad timing. I guess I get to wash clothes instead, but it's not quite the same. ;-)

Saturday, 14 November - An interesting thing happened this morning. I was hoping to sell the trailer this morning. A fellow and his wife drove up here from about 60 miles south to look at the trailer. The first thing he wanted to see was the manufacturer's metalic paper plaque identifying the trailer. The trailer is 20 years old and several digits of the serial number have either been scratched off during normal use or just disintegrated over time. Because of that, he says that he couldn't buy it because it wouldn't be allowed to cross the border into Canada, where they are headed, even though the serial number is stamped into the hitch plate and matches the number on the title. He's apparently had that problem before. Oh well!
                Since I can't get on the boat this weekend, and since there is very little traffic that could see the trailer here in the park at the marina, I drove across town to the Lowe's. There was no place to fit the rig in there, so I went down the street to Home Depot and found a pretty good spot to spend the afternoon. I had several people call and a couple that stopped to look, but didn't sell it. I guess I'll try again tomorrow. I killed the time researching "boat things" on the internet and going across the street to a bike shop and getting a couple of inner tubes for my bicycle. I'm sure they'll be harder to get once I leave shore.
               On another note, I just heard an advertisement on the radio by GoDaddy, one of the internet domain name sellers. I remember when I first got my domain name, Photographers1, that there was only one authorized seller worldwide; a total monopoly for sure. Domain names cost $35/year through them and if you didn't renew on time, they wouldn't release the name. You had to buy another year from them. That happened to me. GoDaddy now sells them for $3.50/year, a pretty good example of how capitalism works FOR the consumer.

Sunday, 15 November - I went into Walmart this morning and bought a couple of cans of Rustoleum paint, then over to an empty parking lot to touch up the rust, oops!, I mean paint on the trailer, and have now returned to the parking lot at Home Depot hoping I can rustle up some interest for the trailer. Unfortunately, I can't park very close to the entrance where most of the contractors park. This trailer is too heavy for most vehicles, and a professional is more likely to need something this heavy duty.

Monday, 16 November - I had thought they were going to put a couple of layers of fiberglass on the bottom of the keel and let it harden, but water was still draining from it, so they put it back on the blocks to continue drying out. No progress there, but I don't want water sealed up inside it either.
                Now I have to retract some of the statements I made Friday. The fellow let me down. Luckily, I stuck my head into the chain locker early today. He had, indeed, added a second layer of paint, but the drain hole in the bottom hadn't been cleared. It wasn't even visible. They were ready to put the chain back in, but I told them, "Stop! This has to be fixed." I insisted that the line needed to be cleared and it's a good thing I did. I thought it was just covered up with loose debris, but we tried to blow it out from the other end with an air hose...nothing. So we tried a plumber's snake...nothing, but we could tell about where the obstruction was located. This could have all been avoided if, when the fellow started working in the space, he had simply dropped a rag to the bottom of the locker to keep particles from going in the hole, but he didn't, so particles that he ground off went down the hole and covered it up. Then he fiberglassed the space, then painted. Everything ran into the hole. It was full of paint down to about 2 feet where a particle of fiberglass plugged the hose. It cost us a day. In fact, more time than that. I hadn't seen them board the boat, but when I returned from a short trip to the motorhome, I checked to see if they had done any work. They had put the chain back in, so I couldn't see the drain. I assumed they had cleared the tube, but thought I'd better make sure. I removed the chain and, sure enough, it was still covered over. If I hadn't checked, I wouldn't have known until I hit heavy seas or bad weather and the chain locker started overflowing into the forepeak berth.
                Perhaps tomorrow we'll tackle the problem again in earnest.

Tuesday, 17 November - Today wasn't terribly exciting other than the fact that I dropped my unlocked iPhone 6+ about 10ft. to the ground from the deck of the boat. Thank goodness I have an Otter Box case and a leather belt case on it too. That could have been a very expensive mistake. I arrived at the boat early, anticipating that the worker would return to finish the work on the drain for the chain locker, but no one ever came to the boat at all. I did some rearranging in two of the lazarettes and attempted to check the starting battery. I checked the battery voltage with my multimeter and tested the battery again with my automotive load tester. Both checked out good, but according to the survey on the boat, the battery wouldn't start the engine. Since then, I have started the engine with the house batteries, intended for use to run the electronics and lighting, not start the engine. There was another test that I wanted to run, a hydrometer test to measure the specific gravity of the battery acid. I found out that, once again, my timing was terrible. I had hauled two hydrometers all the way from Utah on this trip, but gave one away to the thrift store last week - the good one. It was larger and I thought both were useable, so I kept the smaller one. I found out yesterday that it leaks. It seems like lots of things are going that way recently.
                No one ever came to the boat to do any work, so about 3:30, I headed across town to an Ace Hardware parking lot to display the trailer, without any success, then back to the marina to wash clothes. I don't know if it was the detergent I used or the washers, but all my clothes still look really dirty. They all need rewashing, but I doubt that I'll take the time to do it.

Wednesday, 18 November - I arrived at the boat yard about 8:20am and no one was on the boat, so I ran through the settings on my Xantrex Link Pro battery monitor whose instructions I downloaded from the internet yesterday while sitting outside Ace Hardware. For some strange reason, I have a full set of instructions onboard for a Xantrex Link 20, which will monitor two sets of batteries, and I do have two, the house batteries and the starter battery, but the monitor that I have is Link Pro, so the instructions that I have are useless. The unit monitors only the house batteries, but they will definitely be the most important to me. Draining them to too low a level if the wind charger and solar panels don't keep up with my electrical usage will significantly shorten the life of the batteries...and they are very expensive.
                That only took about 30 minutes and no one had arrived to work on the boat, so I went over to the office to ask if anyone would be working on it today. No, so I asked if they would be working on it on Friday. Yes. "Tomorrow", I asked? I was amazed that they would be working of Thanksgiving Day. Both people looked at me like I was weird. Of course I am, but I didn't expect the quizzical look. "Thanksgiving is next week," they said in unison. Oh my God! I'm glad I found out today! I have an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner that I was going to show up for at 1:00 tomorrow! I would have been totally embarrassed! Very awkward! Whew!
                Things on the boat are so disheveled that there's not much I can do there, so now I'm sitting in the parking lot of the local Lowe's Hardware Store killing a little time and hoping, once again, to attract a little attention to the trailer. I do have one fellow that says he'll buy it on Friday, but I'm certainly not counting on that. First one with the cash gets it.
                One thing I'm sure of. As soon as I sell the trailer and have no need to hang out in parking lots at hardware stores, I'll discover about 10 or 20 things, one at a time, that I need to buy at a hardware store. Right now, I can't think of anything...except to sell a trailer!
                Wow! I'm beginning to think that shopping at Lowe's hardware might be dangerous to your health. I've been here about 5 hours and there have been about that many emergency medical vehicles leave this parking lot with their lights flashing and sirens wailing. Maybe it's the heat and humidity. The last two days were up around 87°F. I'm not sure what the temperature is today. Not as hot, but still pretty warm.

It's time to post this to my website, so I'll get that done and call it a day.

            Until next time,
                        Have a great week!

                                          Rick