Three Things

Posted on by Brenda under interior, Weather, wildlife

There are three things I seem to write about:

1. Pretty birds, starfish, wildlife

2. Projects

3. Howling winds

Today, we’ll talk about all three. We’ve had more than our share of lovely days with nifty little birds hanging around the boat. I’m sure they’re wanting to be fed (we never feed these birds) but, still, they’re so cute. I rowed David and his bike to shore so he can meet up with a friend (at a mooring field a few miles away) to practice sailing the friend’s boat for an upcoming race. All I can say is “yahoo, we won’t have to race OUR boat!” even while David gets his go-fast-and-heel-too-far-fix. On the way back to the boat, I was surrounded by the little loon looking birdies. They look like miniature loons and certainly dive like them too.

Once back on the boat, I got to work on my part of the settee project: more paint and varnish. I had the two large pieces of plywood that make up the underside of the port-side pilot berth outside for painting whilst I painted the bulkhead adjacent the berth. All the mahogany has 3 coats of varnish (or is it 4?) and thus I’ve moved on to painting the adjacent surfaces. Once I got the big sheets of 9mm plywood covered in paint and delicately balanced on little scraps of wood on the fore deck, the winds decided to start blowing very hard and I wondered if perhaps my plywood was going to fly away. I couldn’t weight it down but I did angle it so the leading edge (towards the anchored front of the boat) was positioned on low blocks while the trailing edge was higher so the wind would hopefully push the plywood down rather than lift it up. It seemed to work.

That wind did really howl though. Later in the afternoon, while I was below decks I heard a sharp toot on an airhorn and thought that either there’s a race starting adjacent Mahdee or someone is signaling me. I popped up on deck and found David and Don flying by Mahdee in the 40′ or so sail boat they’ll be racing next week. As they spun circles around me, I asked what they were doing here in the quiet anchorage rather than out in the windier bay or even the ocean. “Too windy” they said with grins plastered on their faces. I’d swear they were drinking but know that Don doesn’t keep alcohol on the boat so I figured they were just drunk with the exhilarating winds of the day.

Last night the winds died into a lovely calm but today they’ve whipped back up into a nice little torrent of noise in the rigging and slapping waves on the hull. Too much wind to put another coat of paint on the plywood so I had to resort to other projects–paperwork this go ’round.

So, there we have it–cute birds, projects, and howling winds.

Update on the Deck Moat

Posted on by Brenda under interior, Systems

It is really funny how long we continue to use our “stop gap” solutions on a variety of things, in the case of the wood stove chimney, we still are using what we started out with. See post link here on deck moat installation. We still are using a 4′ length of galvi 6″ pipe and a T from the Home Depot for the upper stove pipe. The part that comes through the deck iron is stainless steel which I had made by a fellow in Maine called Dan who markets himself as Dan’s Rugged Pipes on Ebay as I recall. When we’re underway, we stash the stove pipe in the forecastle, put a watertight rubber sleeve over the “stub” and a good looking sunbrella cover over that (attached with heavy duty hose clamps of the sort you use on exhaust system). The entire bronze deck moat is actually above the deck itself because of the way we did the wood blocking.

ondeck

One of these days, gotta get around to making a proper Charlie Noble and getting the extension made in SS.

At anchor, baking all day.

baking2

Sort of “hillbilly” LOL.

Starboard Main Saloon Seat Taking Shape

Posted on by Schooner Mahdee under interior, photos

Ah, after hours and hours of milling lumber for the ceiling, sole, port and starboard saloon seat framing…we’ve begun to get something in the boat that looks suspiciously like a saloon seat taking shape (rather than simply the old water tank piled up with stuff!)

Here’s some progress pictures. The first is of the boards David made from a big teak board. The work was done at the North Island wood shop.

teak

The next picture is of the Alaskan Yellow Cedar ceiling

ayc

Then, a picture of David fishing a dropped fastener from the bilge. The project of that day was installing new teak sole board along the edge of the existing teak sole boards.

sole1

The new (light color) teak sole can be seen along the new raise panel Sapele construction of the starboard saloon seat shaping up here. Every one of those face panels are trapezoids due to the slant of the sole. Not a rectangle to be found.

seat1