Monday night I took the plunge, I ordered my very first smart phone. I have had major reservations about it. Various groups i belong to have IT persons in them and the talk has been about how they have tracking devices that record everything you text or do that you can't get rid of. My final analysis is if they have nothing better to do then spy on me, our country must be pretty safe, as the rowdiest thing i do is get into some serious sailing sites and maybe do a bit of research for writing on my other favorite subject.
Wednesday it came. There are days a good healthy scream is what is called for and Wednesday after noon was that day,. It was that or throw this brand new smart phone against the wall. NOTHING was going right,. It would not let me sign into face book or yahoo. Forget Google. I either got a message saying that the email address I gave been typing for years was bad or the password was bad or if those both passed muster then the server was having trouble, I gave up. Tonight i called customer service, at first they thought it might be a bad phone. As it turned out, all it needed was a bit of reprogramming which was OK with me as i really did not want to have to wait on a new phone to arrive,. '
'Why did I take the plunge? INTERNET!
The silly thing has its own hot spot and it can tether to my lap top. If I had known that I would have done this LONG AGO! The lack of a physical key board bothered me at first but this one is actually not all that hard to use like the first virtual key board I had, so its all good. It takes time to get use to applying the right pressure and holding my fingers right to tap the key board but it is not impossible. The cheap service is only 2 gig of data a month which means I'm not going to be watching a lot of video and I kind of miss that. I like my YouTube instructional videos but I'll make do. AS long as Mickey D's and Applebee's are open I'm good. The sale rep explained to me the government made a law, data carriers have to offer you one of three choices which is why no more unlimited data. plans. You either get cut off and pay more. or get cut off period or you can get throttle. I can live with the slower speed as long as it is not to terribly slow. 3 G in this area on the phone is not to bad. I tried to watch a YouTube video last night on the computer. It was buffering immediately . Hopefully with the reprogramming we did today that will be improved. Time will tell as I have not checked it yet. Get a 32 GB micro card and I'm going app happy. Active Captain is on the list!
Went kind of nuts on getting the equipment for galley. Assuming the stuff in storage down south is still there I am good to go. Got a 2 burner Coleman camp stove and the oven that sets on top. As soon as that stove arrives I am baking me some biscuits and brownies! I am surprised at how large the oven actually is. Not sure yet but it looks like I could bake a small chicken in it. Got a lot of things that have been on my wish list. Once I make sure a few technical details are taken care of I am getting a couple of gallons of resin, cloth etc and figuring out how many stainless steel screws , bolts etc I need for the deck hardware. Then its down to the red oak for the backing plates, what ever wood I get for mods and deciding if I am going to send the sails out to be reconditioned. They are stained by mud daubers and look kind of tacky. Well I'm off of here. Typing this out reminded me I want to down load the Active Captain app before I forget it.
Sail safe but OUT THERE AND SAIL!
Friday, January 17, 2014
Life is what it is: The keel
As I sit here looking at this tiny little puppie dog curled up next to me I realize all the drama of this last winter just dont matter. Life is what it is. This last several months have been interesting to say the least,. The funny part is its the kind of stuff NO BODY wants to hear about so I will be nice and not go into it. It has been a winter of growth.
The good news is it APPEARS I MIGHT actually get out of here this season! The bucket list got a funding boost. Granted the largest part of that boost is going on things I have to get done before I can sign off of this town,, that do not become part of a boat or a sailing kitty, but are 'have to' none the less. This stuff I have been whittling down slow but sure for several years will now all get done in one fell swoop. Life does have it's good days.
So far this winter we found out the bottom needs to be completelyt reglassed over. Myabe I could get by with it as it is. After the keel, Im not going to risk it, It either gers reglassed otr it gets cut up!
As I am grinding out what I thought was just cracks on the keel, the resin started falling off literally in chunks,. The ONLY thing holding it together was the cloth. This is not good. Repairable but not what I had hoped for. Had to plan on waiting on resin so the idea was start stripping the bottom down to the fiberglass since the paint is not going to take the barrier coat I bought. Turns out it is cracked all the way up to the water line all the way back from bow tip to transom. Some thing hit this boat and hit it HARD! You can see the one spot that is not cracked, It is a very neatly patched hole, the size of an old silver dollar maybe a bit larger about 3 feet back from the tip of bow. The rest is cracked. How deep does it go? I don't know. The inside looks good. I don't trust the out side. The thought I cannot shake is just like the keel the only thing holding it together is the cloth, I am either putting a layer of glass over it all or it gets cut up. .
THE KEEL
The original idea was to get it low enough to get the cracks ground out, refilled and painted. Well, by the time we got that far there was nothing left resin wise.
About the time we got her this far down I decided it was time to pull the locking pin out completely and remove the keel pin and let her drop. I had to beat the keel pin out., She was bent a good solid 20 degrees and holding tight. Got her beat out and had myself tucked inside braced expecting this heavy steel plate to drop like a rock onto the straps we had in place. NOTHING! She did not budge an inch. Got under it and looked. I original thought maybe we had strapped her in to tight to drop with the safety strap, It was plenty loose enough . We had a good 1/2 inch clearance that would have been tight had she dropped. The keel pin and locking pin were both out and she was stuck tight. The fiberglass in that part of the keel had swollen.
The question at this point was how do we get the front to drop? Gravity seemed the best idea short of having a sky hook. so we got jacks under the back end and pushed her up just a bit to relocate the center of gravity. We eventually had that keel running nearly level and still NOTHING!
It took my saw man slamming into the keel side as hard as he could with a full length landscaping timber to knock her loose 1/ 16th of an inch at a time at first until she gradually started coming out a bit faster up to about 1/4 in at a time. I don't think we ever got her to go farther then a 1/4 of an inch per pounding. It was at least an hour or two of pound, take a short break and pound some more until she finally came out of the hole. By then there was no resin left on her as you can see.
I'm figuring at least 2 maybe 3 gallons of resin and fiber shreds with cloth intermittent to make real sure this don't happen again.
Life Happens. Just make sure you get out there and SAIL!
The good news is it APPEARS I MIGHT actually get out of here this season! The bucket list got a funding boost. Granted the largest part of that boost is going on things I have to get done before I can sign off of this town,, that do not become part of a boat or a sailing kitty, but are 'have to' none the less. This stuff I have been whittling down slow but sure for several years will now all get done in one fell swoop. Life does have it's good days.
So far this winter we found out the bottom needs to be completelyt reglassed over. Myabe I could get by with it as it is. After the keel, Im not going to risk it, It either gers reglassed otr it gets cut up!
As I am grinding out what I thought was just cracks on the keel, the resin started falling off literally in chunks,. The ONLY thing holding it together was the cloth. This is not good. Repairable but not what I had hoped for. Had to plan on waiting on resin so the idea was start stripping the bottom down to the fiberglass since the paint is not going to take the barrier coat I bought. Turns out it is cracked all the way up to the water line all the way back from bow tip to transom. Some thing hit this boat and hit it HARD! You can see the one spot that is not cracked, It is a very neatly patched hole, the size of an old silver dollar maybe a bit larger about 3 feet back from the tip of bow. The rest is cracked. How deep does it go? I don't know. The inside looks good. I don't trust the out side. The thought I cannot shake is just like the keel the only thing holding it together is the cloth, I am either putting a layer of glass over it all or it gets cut up. .
THE KEEL
The original idea was to get it low enough to get the cracks ground out, refilled and painted. Well, by the time we got that far there was nothing left resin wise.
About the time we got her this far down I decided it was time to pull the locking pin out completely and remove the keel pin and let her drop. I had to beat the keel pin out., She was bent a good solid 20 degrees and holding tight. Got her beat out and had myself tucked inside braced expecting this heavy steel plate to drop like a rock onto the straps we had in place. NOTHING! She did not budge an inch. Got under it and looked. I original thought maybe we had strapped her in to tight to drop with the safety strap, It was plenty loose enough . We had a good 1/2 inch clearance that would have been tight had she dropped. The keel pin and locking pin were both out and she was stuck tight. The fiberglass in that part of the keel had swollen.
The question at this point was how do we get the front to drop? Gravity seemed the best idea short of having a sky hook. so we got jacks under the back end and pushed her up just a bit to relocate the center of gravity. We eventually had that keel running nearly level and still NOTHING!
It took my saw man slamming into the keel side as hard as he could with a full length landscaping timber to knock her loose 1/ 16th of an inch at a time at first until she gradually started coming out a bit faster up to about 1/4 in at a time. I don't think we ever got her to go farther then a 1/4 of an inch per pounding. It was at least an hour or two of pound, take a short break and pound some more until she finally came out of the hole. By then there was no resin left on her as you can see.
I'm figuring at least 2 maybe 3 gallons of resin and fiber shreds with cloth intermittent to make real sure this don't happen again.
Life Happens. Just make sure you get out there and SAIL!
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