I’m Flying! I’m Flying!

Week ten and I’m flying forward… Well actually I’m not. With Day Light Savings ending and Autumn in full swing, my working hours have been curtailed somewhat. To compound this, what I need to do, sanding, needs to be done outside to keep the dust out of the house. Which limits me to working over the weekends.

Saturday started with another trip to Bunnings for new sanding disks and a pair of working gloves to save my hands from even more splinters and cuts. From there I got stuck in with the sanding. Fortunately, between bouts of rain I managed to sand back the patches I added.

Sunday was babysitting duty looking after Nicolas and Eloise while Mum and friends were swinging from the trees!

Great fun was had and Nico learnt a new Dutch word; Gek, as in geke Mum :) Eloise took most of it in her stride, so long as she was being carried by Dad… Which made taking photos a bit of a challenge!

After we got home it was back to work on the boat, I had my first experience with fairing powder. Not being sure of how much I should be adding, I just kept adding the powder till I got it nice and thick (peanut butter was one guide I read).

Using this paste I filled in the gaps left by the opened air bubbles and covered the areas of the stern bare of glass.

Next week….

…. More sanding and then another layer of epoxy before I finally get to turn the hull.

Frustrations

Week nine and I’ve hit a road bump. When I shaped the stern and bow stems I gave them quite a sharp edge, well it turns out that this is not ideal for laying the glass which resulted in several air bubbles along those edges. So during the week I took Thursday off to run taxi for Mum and the rest of the day was spent sanding away the air pockets.

Nico was keen to jump aboard, even if the hull is still the wrong way up!

Saturday was spent at Mums with Isabelle (my cousin) and her two children Jonah and Olivia. Nicolas had a great time playing with the bigger kids. But for me the day was pretty much a write off (at least regarding the boat).

Sunday it was patch up day. I marked out the areas for re-glassing with masking tape and set to work. The good part is that I fixed the patches on the main part of the hull. The bad is that the stems still have air bubbles in them. I think I’ll just end up smoothing the edges back and giving the stem a thick coat of epoxy.

Thursday, Cecile’s company; Beca Applied Technologies celebrated its 5th birthday with an evening at Treasure Island mini golf course. Nico got into the pirate spirit and soon will be ready to captain his own ship!

Eloise on the other hand took it all in her stride and was handed from one set of willing arms to another as the teams progressed through the course.