Paint!

I am typing again from our comfortable AirBnB in Mamaroneck, which we have extended through Thursday morning. Clearly the hope, which I expressed at the end of my last post, that we'd at least be back aboard before you heard from me again, did not come to fruition. As always happens in boatyards, it's "just one more week."

Best shot I have showing all three colors, freshly applied, taken just two days ago.

Once we do move back aboard, I'll have even less time to write, so I am taking the weekend downtime to catch up a bit here; I already have 25 photos, culled from twice that. We've now crossed the three-month mark of being kicked out of our own home, and while our rentals have been comfortable enough, we're good and done now. We've also spent a small fortune; hindsight is 20/20, and we could probably have signed a six-month lease for a place for less.

Right after the house was sprayed. Darker color on the hull is actually primer, in "buff" color. I could not board and I snapped this photo from atop the ferry in front of us.

A little overspray made it past the door covering. They have since cleaned it up.

In perhaps a testament to how discombobulating this has been, after dinner two Saturdays ago, while my blog post was sitting here waiting on finishing touches, we both complete spaced on the flute concert we were hoping to see in a nearby park. I realized that as I was wrapping up the post and reading my own words about it; the concert started at 7 and I got the post finished a half hour or so into it, too late to head over.

First look at the hull paint. For commercial (as opposed to yacht) grade paint it is very glossy.

Mistakes happen. This old sealant from where a latch was installed just got painted over instead of being removed.

Sunday we finally got around to making the pilgrimage to Walter's Hot Dogs, just a ten minute scooter ride and which we've passed a half dozen times going to and from Larchmont. That kind of a place is not really a dinner venue for us, so it had to wait until a suitable lunch opportunity arose. While the building is in a sort of faux Japanese pagoda style, and might be mistaken for a garden tea house, it was built that way as a hot dog stand back in 1919, when "roadside" was a new concept and businesses had to vie for travelers' attention visually. It's now on the National Register of Historic Places, but it also has very good hot dogs and their own branded mustard.

Walter's Hot Dogs.

Louise, in an effort to keep her migraines at bay, has been drinking a lot of non-alcoholic beer, and "Athletic Brewing" is her favored brand. You know NA has gone mainstream when the beer distributor is wrapping the brand on their truck, which I spotted when I made a run to the beer store.

Monday morning I corralled the yard manager to see if we could nail down a deadline for being dragged out of the shed. It was pretty clear the painters were going to miss their July 31 deadline, and so we agreed to extend our checkout here by a week. That would take us to Monday morning, and I had expected we'd be spending today and tomorrow schlepping things back over to the boat. But a week later even that was looking tight and we extended yet again.

The housing for the starboard nav light broke in two months ago; fortunately I caught the piece before it went overboard. I took the opportunity here to repair it with both a plastic welder and some two-part glue.

In the two weeks since my last post I've only been able to spend about eight days on the boat. The rest of the time I've been kept off either by wet paint, or the fact that I was literally the only one in the building and I am not comfortable working there all alone. Still, I managed to make some progress on project work.

I asked the yard to replace our 20-year-old wet exhaust hose, because wrestling 6" hose is not a job I can do myself. I spotted it in the receiving area; 25' of it at something north of $60 per foot.

I handed off the interior window frames for the pilothouse doors to John, the sandblasting guy, and when I got them back I sanded the freshly blasted surface to at least an approximation of bare finished aluminum. I could not use my orbital sander on the inside corners so I had to run down to the supply house and buy a pair of "sanding sponges" in medium and fine grit and finish by hand.

The window frames mostly sanded. A bit rough but I'd need to know a lot more about who will be impressed if I spend another couple of hours sanding.

What they looked like before blasting. I snapped this photo in the blasting shed.

As long as I was working on the pilothouse door hardware, I also cleaned up the four dogs that seal the door against weather. Contoured shapes again called for hand scrubbing with Barkeepers' Friend and rags. This morning I did the doorlatch handles here in our slop sink with On & Off, basically hydrochloric acid.

Cleaning up the dogs was a fiddly process involving lots of disassembly.

All done. I think they came out OK.

The only "before" pic I could find. Top one has already been scrubbed some.

That first week was the hottest of our stay, with the mercury just kissing triple digits. It was heading towards unworkable inside the completely closed-up boat, so in order to keep working I took a couple of hours to get our free-standing air conditioner upstairs and set up in the saloon. That involved cutting a 6-3/8" hole in the plywood that was standing in for a window they had to remove, using a "pot light" saw that I had originally purchased a decade ago to cut an access for the cats into their litter box area. This is only the second time I've had a use for it.

Mr. Roboto, set up temporarily in the saloon. He has his own back story.

Vent hole from the outside and the expensive hole saw that cut it. My cost per use went down 50% though.

I also had to spend some time replacing a computer keyboard. With things a little slower and less material to carry back and forth, I've been forgoing the e-bike in favor of walking to and from the yard each day after lunch (I'm still biking for the morning half), about a mile each way. To avoid carrying my pack, I set up my old laptop on the boat and I keep the newer one here. Laptop keyboards are basically a consumable, and last week its number was up. The $12 aftermarket replacement was a poor fit and it took me over an hour to make the swap.

I am competing with this aluminum sailing yacht for the painters' time. To the right is the new Savannah Belles ferry, moving right along.

I used some of my off-boat downtime to finalize the list of replacement fasteners and other items I needed from industrial supply house McMaster-Carr and send off the order. Unlike Amazon Prime, shipping is not free, and is minimized by batching as much together as possible. Delivery via UPS ground, however, is usually next day, rivaling Amazon. Once I had it all in hand, it took me over an hour to match it all up and label it by application, so I am not hunting for parts as I put the boat back together.

What $200 worth of stainless fasteners looks like after organizing them.

The aft deck eyeball camera has always been a little too high since I first installed it. This junction box will bring it 2" down from the ceiling, but, of course, I had to modify it to fit the existing holes. The camera on the bookcase in the background is a new wireless pan/tilt/zoom for the top of the mast, for which I had to fabricate a bracket.

Not everything is cost-effective to order either from McMaster or Amazon, and sometimes you just need a good old-fashioned big-box store (and sometimes you need an even older-fashioned local hardware store). Last weekend we made a run up to the Home Deport in Port Chester, stopping for bagels in Harrison along the way. On Sunday I gave myself the afternoon off and took in the latest Mission: Impossible movie at the very comfy local cinema.

Our last scooter mascots succumbed to exposure to the elements, and Louise has been on the hunt for second-hand replacements. Meet my new pillion Bruce the dog, and Louise's sidekick Kelly the sloth.

Louise in the meantime has been busy with some boat projects of her own, in addition to continuing her charity quilting. She replaced the binding on the flybridge console cover and cleaned up the air conditioner cover. She also made me a very nice tool roll for my thread taps, their matching bits, and thread dies. Cleaning out threads that have been faired and painted will be constant for the next few weeks, and my storage for the heretofore very occasionally used taps was not well organized for the task.

Louise ordered some surplussed Cordura to make me this nice roll for my taps and dies. The two pouches at left hold the dies. The very large bit and tap near the center is for 1/2" NPT, which it used all over the boat for cable glands.

The couple of extra weeks here necessitated buying more laundry detergent. It went rogue on her four-block ride home and filled Louise's trunk; she's been trying to get "that freshly laundered scent" out of things ever since.

In addition to Harrison Bagels, we also added the local panaderia just a block from the apartment to our list. We tried out nearby Harbour Fish & Company, not worth a repeat visit despite the proximity. Louise picked up fresh ravioli from the nearby North Shore Farms market to cook for the couple of nights the rain kept us home. And in the middle of the hottest week, we enjoyed a late evening at the Mamaroneck Block Party, where they closed off the avenue for street vendors, bouncy houses, and lots of family-friendly fun; we started the evening in the air conditioning of Frankie & Fanucci's, open to the street, just as we had done for the parade.

Our view for the start of block party. That garbage truck is there to thwart terrorist vehicle attacks, not pick up the trash. The other three entrances were blocked by a dump truck, a frond-end loader, and a street sweeper.

Making enormous bubbles at the block party.

I'm almost afraid to say it for fear of jinxing it, but I am fairly certain we'll be out of this house by my next post. I expect we'll likely spend a week or so on the hard before splashing, and I will have to rig the boat for that, rerouting condensate drains and running a gray water hose to a yard drain. They ran out of tan paint, and I have my fingers crossed more will be on site by early in the week.