The Toy: A Small Inland Water Catamaran, as built by a GIRL!: The Sand (wo)Man Returns

Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Sand (wo)Man Returns

It has been interesting. As you know I officially moved into the Venture a while back. Its taken a while but I have got portions of it sorted. The new storage area in the v berth is now boat repair supplies and a few small misc items like spare TP for good measure. It just made sense to do it that way until I am absolutely sure I have ALL leaks sealed after I reattach the deck to hull and the head is right there. After all NO ONE wants soggy

TP. Have seriously started working on sanding the hull and bottom. Have been running low on sanding disk means I'm having to pick my battles of what I am sanding first. The original idea was use the belt sander on the bottom and get that done. NOT going to happen unless I raise the boat back up on jacks which I might do. Laying flat on your back and holding a running belt sander upside down is a great work out if you are only to be doing it for a few minutes. When you have 22 ft of hull bottom, it gets OLD fast! The decision is made. Do the rub rail area first with the belt sander and use the oscillator sander on the bottom. It takes a LOT LONGER and uses a LOT more disk . The trade off is I can actually move the next morning which I see as a major benefit.

How much of the sanding am I going to do before I pull out? I do not know. It depends on a few other issues and how I decide to do them . The question is do I move the boat to a yard or do it here remains to be answered. I have come up with a much cheaper plan then renting space in a boat yard. I called around some of the self storage places that have electricity in the storage units . I told them flat out I needed to set a a man cave that I could work on my boat and van on and would they mind if I plugged in a sander etc from time to time. Not a problem so that settles that. Spending 80.00 – 100.00 a month beats the socks off of 15.00 and 20.00 USD a day. Since I'm not going to be not on the boat very often the solution I''m seriously considering is, rent a cheap sleeping room or find a camping spot for the interim and I'm off and running.

Got a van, Turns out it needs more work then I thought but I'm learning a lot in between my new best buddies, Chilton, Haynes and you tube. LOL So far I have bled, flushed and or replaced just about any thing remotely close to being fluid. Stil have power steering to do. Once that is done i THINK we are good to go. Some
BONE HEAD replaced the drive shaft and we discovered after the new u joints were pressed in that it does not take the normal stock parts. WHAT THEY DID IN STEAD was PUT OVER SIZED CAPS ON. 1/16th of an inch may not sound like much, but in a u joint that can really mess things up. Looking for new pinion. Another one of life's little pleasures
Got to fooling around on the boat.

Have a question for any one that has an answer. Look at the next pic and tell me what is the hole for?

Have a friend who bought an anchor, Had it sent to my place to forward since the shipper did not do international WOW over 900.00 USD for the cheapest! Can you say sticker shock! Decided to do a bit of reconfiguring to get it down to USPS dimension limits. This is a work in progress and hopefully I wont forget to take pics as I go.The idea is make a triangular tube to ship it in ,there by saving 25% of girth and about 800.00 cash.