I’m amazed by the frequency that we manage to see the same cruisers all over the place. For example, we just saw a couple Canadian cruisers in La Playa anchorage on the weekend–we met them in Brisbane California (SFB area) and yesterday a couple of Swiss cruisers that we’d met in Napa Valley (during our haulout) pulled into San Diego. We’re excited to see them and look forward to linking up in the next week or so to catch up on where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing. We’d hoped to meet them again in the Bay area and figured we’d not see them again once we left the Bay.

People always remember Mahdee and us. I think it has something to do with her being a little, um…unusual…on the cruising circuit. But, many times we don’t recall the people or their boats! This can be embarrassing at times for David and I. People dingy by our boat and start talking and we’re anxiously looking around trying to find a familiar looking boat! Or, they walk up to us on the public docks and we really have NO idea where they came from! After smiling and chatting a bit, we can usually figure it out. If not, I just have to come clean and say “uh, how is it that we know each other?”
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Last night we loaded Mahdee up with stacks of lumber and supplies so this morning we motored back over to the A-9 anchorage and after enjoying the lovely view of downtown San Diego on this first sunny day in a week or so, we went inside and started on projects. My projects today are easier than David’s: mine involve online shopping for compact fluorescent and LED bulbs whereas David’s is fitting sole pieces in place. My tasks are much cleaner. His involve way too much sanding, cutting and making messes. I’m trying to ignore all the messes. Its sort of the whole sausage making thing–I just stay away from him and his projects when they’re too dusty since I’ll be very unhappy if I actually see what is taking place in terms of drop cloths/vacuuming or lack of those things!

Somehow I need to start making dinner soon–but David is working on the galley sole so…maybe it will be crackers and Tofutti for us tonight.

When we had Mahdee in the boatyard and were working on her Alaska Yellow Cedar overhead, the yard owner would come by and tease us that we were “making toothpicks” as part of our boatbuilding. And, it seemed that way. We’ll we ‘re back at it–that is taking big, big boards and turning them into tiny narrow boards. This time the AYC is turning into boards for the ceiling that will cover the hull in the main saloon. Yesterday, David and I together spent all day making toothpicks and the result is that we now have the wood needed to begin the process of installing the ceiling! Day before yesterday, David and I culled through our storage unit and pulled out a great big teak board (2-1/4″ x 9″ x 19-1/2 ft) and made it into lovely 1/2″ x 5″ and 1/2″ x 4″ x 19 ft sole boards that will cover our exposed subfloor and match the existing teak sole. We didn’t buy that board so we kept forgetting that we have it–it was given to us along with some other leftover wood from someone else’s boat project.

Today, David will be cutting notches in the edges of some of the new sole boards to fit it around bulkheads and such and then tonight we’ll be bringing our “load” back to the boat for installation. I’m not quite sure where it will all be stored since it has been very rainy and we cannot store it on deck. There’s little room in the boat proper for these long boards to reside before installation…so this will be interesting. We also need to get our chop saw out of the storage and find a place to use it and store it while it is on the boat. We’re certainly going to look like a “lumber schooner” for the next week or so.

This week, we also need to get my military ID card (expired since June) renewed so I can drive on-and-off the bases in San Diego. The wood working shop David uses for some of our projects is on a military base and without proper ID I’m stuck there with him and can’t run errands while he’s making toothpicks because I wouldn’t be able to get back to the base! I think he’s secretly pleased with this situation since I help him with his work if I have nowhere else to go.

Let’s start with this–I know for a fact that Mahdee had a traditional heart pine sole when she was launched. It says so right there in Crocker’s design specs for the boat and I have little doubt that it did exist. However, when we got the boat, she had this interesting sole made up of a bottom layer of strong 3/4″ marine plywood with a thin 1/2″ layer of 5″ wide teak t&g boards on top. Lots of panels of this stuff and it took us forever to get it (mostly) all back together in the boat.

We didn’t bother refinishing it since we figured it needed to be stripped, bleached and major time sanded and we’d put that off until the rest of the interior was done. Along the “edges” of these panels where the sole goes under the furniture and intersects with the hull ceiling, there’s a varying 1″ wide to 10″ wide (depends on where you are in the boat) section of marine ply subfloor that we installed that needs to have the thin teak glued to it in order for it to “match” the rest of the funky teak sole.

Yesterday we pulled out all the various ugly pieces of this crazy teak that had been used for this edging in the past and that we’ve had in a long bundle stored partially atop a fuel tank under the cockpit and partially alongside the engine, where it can whack us on the noggin’ whenever we’re not careful about hunching down under the bundle when passing through that area. I mostly avoid this treacherous part of the boat. Between the head-thumping bundle of teak and the fact that this part of the boat on each side of the engine has no sole but rather a steep increasing slope down into a wineglass hull shape that is a bit scary to start sliding down…well…the whole lack of ergonomics keeps me away and forces David to be the one who scrounges around for engine parts, garbage bags, or other sundries that happen to be stored along that part of the boat. I digress again…now we have all these chunks of teak laying out and we’ve tried to figure out how they will best be used.

Yesterday, what we finally figured out was–let’s start of with the premise that we will not use these ugly bits of teak. Plan A: How about buying a little bit of new teak? After a call to the local wood suppliers and a look at the price lists for matching old-growth (um…Burmese…) teak of $20 to $30 per board foot (one guy was quoting me prices per square foot for 1/2″ thick teak…convert that to board feet pricing and gasp! $50 per bf!). Plan B: Lets forget about matching this hideous stuff, place 1/2″ thick spacers under the built-ins that we’re building in and after we’re done with all this, put in a heart pine sole like she originally had. Price list checks–nobody has heart pine anymore and if they do…$20-$30 per board foot. Nix that idea for now.

Plan C: Let’s go to the storage unit and pull out some other better looking teak that came with Mahdee and that we were given by someone…let’s see if any of that teak can be ripped into 1/2″ thick x 5″ wide boards that will work. Needless to say, if we do that, we will have been carrying around this head banging, cracked up, ugly stuff for nada for a year and a half. That’s the life of working on a boat, I guess.