Filling holes.

We managed to get a lot of much needed work completed yesterday. Once again Graeme joined us, and the 5 of us set about on our tasks and we hustled for the majority of the day. Paige being the smallest, climbed into the anchor locker and painted the entire thing while August started with the second coat in the vberth. In the pictures you can see many pieces of duct take on the ceiling. Each one of these is preventing epoxy from flowing through into the cabin and will be removed.

August painting
August painting
Paige painting
Paige painting

Andrea went to work with wood filler and sealed about 200 tiny screw, nail, and other such holes in any of the wood that will be left exposed. I asked Graeme to start by over-drilling any of the holes on deck that I had missed and I started mixing epoxy. Graeme soon ran out of holes to drill and he joined me in mixing and pouring epoxy.

Filling holes with epoxy
Graeme filling holes with epoxy

As the day progressed, Andrea ran out of wood holes to fill, so she went and applied a second coat of paint to our bruce anchor, At least that is what she told us she was going to do.

See, the admiral has the uncanny ability to strike up a conversation with anybody and in my opinion, maybe get a little distracted from what she is doing at the time. She on the other hand, always reports back that she has been performing research, or learning the ways of the locals, or making a future needed connection. She also has this way of explaining it to you with a heavy serious tone that makes it sound like she has been on some sort of secret spy mission and the outcome of that conversation will help to save the world or some such thing. Yet typically, the look on her face when you catch her, gives away the perhaps not so obvious motivation behind said spy mission. Proof in point, Take a look at the picture – facial expression – serious with a note of oh crap – busted! Sky behind – hmmm turning blue. A bit of shadow in the picture – hmmm warm sun perhaps?? 😉

Saving the world again I see?? ;-)
Saving the world again I see?? 😉

I will add that Graeme and I were on deck filling holes with epoxy and had heard every bit of conversation for the last half hour at least.

August and Paige ran out of places to paint and joined the epoxy crew on deck, and eventually Andrea did as well. So the net result of our day is that every hole on the cabin top, both aft and main, have been drilled, and filled with West System epoxy and structural filler, we have a 2nd coat of paint on all of the areas we previously painted, as well as on the bruce anchor, all immediately visible holes in the wood bulkheads have been filled, and I managed to start filling some of the holes on the interior exposed fiberglass. We are almost at the point of being watertight!!

Holes left to drill and fill with epoxy – all of the stanchions, chainplates, and about 5 deck fittings that are giving us a hard time. As well, we still need to address holes on any vertical surface, as I only had slow cure epoxy hardener which would have resulted in a huge mess. As well, we need to cut wooden plugs to fill the instrument cutouts in the cockpit beside the companionway so that we can epoxy and glass them over.

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