Slow, but progress. When we surveyed our yesterday sandblasted bottom this morning, it was weeping from more places than our baby swiss cheese approach from yesterday. Sigh.... So we decided to be proactive and make it happy rather than sad. Step one was to make the rudder happy -- it was very weepy and sad. We decided to drill holes in the bottom to see if water would run out.... oops....
YIKES! We hadn't thought it would pee for an hour after we drilled the hole. But the great news is ... all that water that was trapped in our rudder is now GONE & it's drying! Oh my goodness.....
By using a larger drill bit, we were able to fair out many of the moisture release blister holes larger with more beveled edges, but David didn't like the idea of me playing with REAL power tools, so he relegated me back to my mouse sander working on the solar panels....
We removed the brackets and they're off being sandblasted & powdercoated, but the framing around the solar panels themselves was flaking white aluminum paint ... so my little mouse sander & I went to work...
By the end of the day, the little mouse sander was happy because it was done working for the day and there were two coats of aluminum paint on the framing for the solar panels. Now maybe I won't get huge paint chips falling off all over the deck ... it just looks tacky, you know what I mean?
In the meantime, David's major projects for the day included epoxying the new Garmin depthsounder to the inside of the hull and also installing the new depth transducer through hull for the ST50 Plus Tridata instrumentation system. This one was important since there's a 2" hole in the bottom of the boat, but it looks good! Who knows if either will work - one is a back up for the other.
Kneading the two part epoxy stick for the Garmin transducer ... such pressure, it has to be installed and ready to go in TWO minutes before the epoxy goes "off" and solidifies, not exactly like playing with playdoh when you were a kid ... ready, set, GO!!!
Whew, it's in -- I'm a bit worried about that bottom left hand corner, but he assures me it is securely bonded to the hull. If there are air bubbles, it won't work as it's not really designed to be epoxied inside sailboat hulls -- it's meant to be attached to the transom of fishing boats ... just sayin....
By this time, we were both bored with sanding, painting and depth transducer projects and went for the DREMEL! Might as well start fairing out some of those baby swiss cheese air holes right? Never mind that it's only been "drying" less than a day and alot of them are still openly weeping? :)
Eh, who every pays attentions to the "rules" anyway -- here you can see only one still weepy and the rest have better smoothed edges - a start for the filling and grinding to come!
And LOOK! The new depth sounder transducer seems to fill that 2" hole perfectly. Of course, we won't know until we drop the boat back in the water, but for now, it's PERFECT!!! Another day is done & there's some wine to drink and rice & beans for dinner! Gotta go!
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