Why we love Sundays

 

what a start to a day

Sunday is our favourite day here in Dickinson, Texas and today was another corker. The sun was shining, the birds were tweeting and the day started with boiled eggs!  Explaining the breakfast to our lovely neighbour Claire a while back we got a response that has stuck with me...

       "We cherish our soldiers, we couldn't dip them in eggs"

The special thing about Sundays here is the ambient sound.  There is radically less of it.  For one thing the school buses stay put in their bus barn at the end of the street. The road traffic is much quieter from all directions though the ever present freeway hum remains.  People seem to stay in their houses even more and all around you see peace and emptiness.  It's lovely!

Over the past few days we've been enjoying the cool sunshine and trying to crack on with the cockpit teak.  The margin trim has taken rather longer than anticipated.  I just keep thinking that as soon as this is done the rest of the deck will just fall into place with minimal resistance... we'll see.  Each and every job seems to throw up unforseen complications.  Often the tasks' timeprint unfolds after we've discussed it with Roger (our yacht carpenter landlord) and he's gently guided us to the more professional, considered and tricky way of undertaking it. 

This happened with the margin trim.  I'd drawn it out, having considered that the outer edges were curved, but not accurately depicting this and going for the ruler approach to the plan.  Then after much deliberation of how much spring and curve could be achieved we'd decided to have the outer boards stay straight and simply to run out along the curve.  Roger's classic diplomacy comes in here

"well that's a valid and proper way to do it, but, you could also do it like this...."

So three days of gluing up wood to an approximate curved continuous thickness then shaping it and we are two planks in to the hour or so's task...  Since then the rest is taking shape but we still await eagerly the day the margin trim is done and we speed through the minor task of laying the whole thing.

First a pattern

 

 Then a whole load of borrowed clamps

 After initial resistance to something that is marketed as and enthused about for being "the permanent solution" I now love using 3M 5200.  Perhaps not the most environmentally sound choice as once cured it is pretty much indestructible but there is something very pleasing about the knowledge that once it is on, good or bad job that's it.  You can't mess with it anymore, the job is done.

 

New winch pads for our stupidly big bronze winches.  The originals were made of teak and too small and rather worn.  These we made from ply wood stuck together, shaped then covered in Fiberglass.

 

We're trying to intersperse a few of the plumbing and engine rigging jobs as we go.

 

Duncan is very happy with his new door made from old broken bits and some old boards from a project Roger was working on, all planed up and carefully crafted

One of the non skid patches didn't work out as we were trying to be thrifty and reuse the fly screen so we're redoing it.

 

The new Cutlass bearing is in and awaiting the prop shaft.

Thanks for looking in on our blog.  Hope you'll come back for more!  Any feedback or advice gratefully received.