Success at Last!!!

It's been a very nice week here all things considered and lots of progress on many different projects was made. To start with I should let you know that the oars have been finished. Richard painted them after work everyday this week and completed them on Thursday. They look just great and you can't tell the black foam grips are for a bicycle lol. Photo space is limited on the blog so I'll just describe them as having white shafts and the paddles are green. (It matches the boat) The oar leathers still need to be tacked on but that will have to wait until Notes is more finished so I can test fit them. No big deal, but if you think about it, this is the 1st project that is complete since I've started. Needless to say they are leaning up again the living room wall acting as a motivational tool. ^_^

Notes is coming along nicely, While I was taping up the ports on Sunday, Richard helped me out by sanding her down again in preparations for the 2nd coat of primer. We then figured out where the waterline is going to be and taped that off so we could prime it again. This was necessary because I expect her to spend a large amount of time in the water so I'll have to put anti-fouling paint on the bottom which requires that you use a different primer. Anyway, the 2nd coat turned out very nice and the exterior is almost ready for final painting now. I figure she'll be ready for commissioning in under a month and you'll get a full photo spread of the mini party when that happens.

BeBop is turning out very very well, but not quite perfect. I don't think Rich and I could of done any better give the circumstances that we had to work with. Saturday was perfect weather for painting the 2nd coat on the sides. We spend the morning sanding them down and the painting was done by about 1pm. Rich would roll it on in about 4 foot sections and I would come along behind him and "Tip" the paint with a 4 inch brush. In english this translates to when you roll it on the paint has tiny air bubbles in it that needs to be popped and blended across the hull. Sounds easy, hard as hell to do right. At 107 bucks a gallon (plus materials) you really don't wanna screw it up. I had a real nice stress headache going on. It turned out very good though, a couple of runs that only Rich and I could probably point out to you. One was so minor I didn't spot it til the next day, another will be sanded and covered by the green trim etc. I'm pretty happy about it all really.


Sunday was warm, calm but overcast. After checking the weather radar to verify it was not going to rain, I decided to press on and paint the areas around the ports with the 2nd coat of Brightsides. As usual with painting the prep work took the longest as I had to tape the ports off and with Rich's help we sanded around them. Then some denatured alcohol to clean the sanded material off the area and then paint. Same way we did the sides of the hull, Rich rolls on the paint and I tipped it. It looks great compared to the 1st coat, zero runs this time. (yay yay yay!!!) Finally as we are finishing up the large above waterline areas we figure out how this weird paint works. I probably wasted a hour this afternoon just looking at her. This is not the same boat I picked up a few months ago. Just scroll back through the old posts and compare them to the new photo's. Add in 400 hours of manual labor and I think you might begin to understand how I feel.

Check out this reflection!!


Cool eh? It ain't AwlGrip but it's close.

The last thing I did this week is purchase another car outright so I can get rid of my PT Crusier. (no more monthy payments) Ouch. This really hurts, but nothing worth doing comes without sacrifice. I believe so strongly in what I'm doing I'm getting rid of my nice car and bought a old 90' Honda Civic that will serve as basic transportation to and from work. Assuming that it doesn't die (seems to run real tight) and I can fix whatever breaks cheap enough I will save over $5,000 dollars in the next 12 months vs keeping the Cruiser. That's a lot of stuff I can buy for BeBop and when I set sail for Mexico (my 1st scheduled stop outside the US circa 2007) I'll sell the Honda probably for what I paid for it and break even. Another perk is the gas mileage will be better by about 10 miles to the gallon. This will probably be the most painful thing I have to do before I leave. I rather like the Cruiser but I don't have enough money to go around.

I'm a firm believer that if you want something bad enough and long enough you can make it happen if your expectations are realistic. Hard work and apply yourself. I really want to go sailing around the world. A nice car does not and can not do that. A nice sailboat however, can. I'm simply trading one for the other. To the people who think you have to have the newest car and compete with the Jones'..(i.e. the ones who would make fun of me)......you can come check out my blog in the future and see all the cool places I was able to visit because I didn't sell my soul to buy a pretty internal combustion engine with a cupholder. I'm giving up materialism as best I can. The "I want this and that" syndrome just leads to a road of suffering my friends. Find satisfaction in your adventures in life...not what your paycheck can buy.

Enough of Jammer's great wisdom...Next weekend I'm hoping to finish sand the bottom, seal the blistered areas and apply some primer. The weekend after that I really want to get the green trim on and get BeBop's name on BeBop lol. I plan on painting it on and I'm going to check out all the different kinds of fonts out there this week to find the right one. Until next time...Fair Winds...