To rest when it's too hot

For a few days now, it’s been too hot to work around the boat in the afternoon so we get up early and stop around lunch time.  That schedule gives us time to perform other chores:  Classify the bins that are now stacked in the cabin:  Books, marine maps, logbooks, and construction logs etc.

One of the happy finds in that hunt: The electric drawings.  That will save us heaps of time when the time comes for electrics.  

.  We’ve also took the opportunity to go to Trois-Rivières to pick up the trailer that will serve as mobile storage space for the next few years.  Renting a similar space for 2 years would cost more or less the same as buying a closed trailer.  It’ll be filled up here and then stored at Grandpa’s place until our return from Japan.  It must be said that in 2004, during Kivioq’s refurb project, we had bought from a friend a very similar trailer and that it had proved very useful.  JF ahd promised himself to someday  get another one.  Trailer: Check.  That being said, we wanted to get the smallest possible trailer that would fit the bill, because of storage fees and gas-mileage.  We therefore had a little fun with Rhino3D and built what they call, at work, a “load plan” (another hot afternoon’s work well used).

Grandpa and Lucie being once more conscripted for 3 days, the staircase and workbench are now painted the same color as the boat.  The bright side of this is that with one coat of Rostoleum primer and one of paint (found during the emptying of the boat), they should last many years.  The dark side is to have found color-matched Rustoleum paint aboard.  Ok, for newbies, hardware store paint is like watercolor for metal:  It’s cute but useless.  The only paint that will effectively protect steel from corrosion is two-part epoxy paint systems, so we cross our fingers and hope that no one had the bright idea to paint our boat with watercolor.  Then we had the visit of Jean-Pierre, Grandpa’s friend and a very experienced welder, who was nice enough to come and evaluate the work to be done:  Not as bad as we expected, Jean-Pierre doesn’t seem fazed at all by the big gaping orange holes around the deck and cockpit.  Decidedly, we have a lot to learn about metal boats.

This morning, one of the jobs reserved for cool mornings:  Install an acrylic window to get used to the caulking and the procedure.  OneLove has a portlight above the companionway hatch cover which we had removed last year because it was leaking badly.  

 .  It is small, rectangular and horizontal, therefore perfect to learn.  On various blogs and forums, we more or less found a consensus:  The two best products to use in rebidding acrylic (and polycarbonate) windows are Sikaflex 295UV and Dow 795.  They both seem to have the votes of pros but the Sika has to be used with a primer paint, which protects it from UVs, to which it is sensitive and it is also quite a bit more expensive.  Another facet of the test is about the bolt:  Modern technique warrants gluing only.  No bolts or any mechanical fasteners;  And the argument is solid:  The same sealants are used on skyscrapers, car windshields and portlights of most production boats.

 .  That’s all good but it’s wuite a leap of faith to leave the already-cut holes empty of bolts on our boat.  In this case though, the portligth will not be subjected to any shear load, beign embedded in the deck and being covered by another acrylic panel, both part of the companionway hatch cover system.  So, we installed the window with Dow 795 using no bolts; We’ll see after the 21 mandatory drying days if we can push it out by brute force.

Lucie took the opportunity to clean up the boat from the bottom up, shop-vac, bleach and all.  The harvest was a good one:  Two Oreo cookies and a candy, which JF and Grandpa gobbled right away…not.  They were probably from the 80s.  It might seem counterintuitive to clean up a boat that we’ll mess right back up but on a long term project, you have to stay motivated, and God knows that a clean space is good for the spirit; Plus you just seem to think better and to foresee the completed project.  Anyway, breathing mildew is not doctor recommended and the boat is full of it right now.

Another project that we keep for fresh mornings:  Preparing the cockpit lockers for the welder.  The ladder suffered badly from corrosion and we need to removed blown-in insulation around the weld area because foam has an infamous tendency to catch fire very easily.  

During that operation, we discovered secret compartments, sealed up with fiberglass.  We’ll close them up properly, with steel!