Boat Dogs, Kindle and Current Events

Well I started leash training the girls. Abbey is catching on to the idea that walking along side of me is easier then being steadily tugged along.  She is not responding to  treats so much as lots of affection. Sandy on the other hnad responds to affection but seems more interested in the treats.
Sandy seems to be familiar with the concept of walking on a leash or is just one extremly smart dog, I'm not sure which, probably both.  I'm guessing she was on a leash before the  peope I got her from had her.  Sandy is the one that when she hears the treat bag  responds  immediately. Abbey will look at you like she is just not sure if it is worth the effort until she is right next to you . 

Tip on treats, The ones I got are about an inch to two inches long. I broke up a bunch and put them in a zip bag. Its easier then breaking them up as needed when you have dogs clamoring for them,


A while back I was introduced to Christine Kling books .This woman can write a real page turner. As a result I stated following the blog  " Write on Water". Now many are not interested in writing as a means to make a living. For those who are,  I highly suggest following this blog. The recent post have been about the economics of writing. Two separate post,  both saying  the same thing, gets my attention. If your going to self publish Kindle is apparently the way to go. The specific links to this topic are here.  Christine's Original blog on Principles versus Income.             Mike's response

Not a lot else going on . Have been working on getting this house finished  so I can sell it to buy THE boat. I'm down to the piddling little stuff that takes time more then money so that's good.  The good news is it looks like we have a way to solve what has turned into a night mare over the deed. It has to go to court. The evidence I have is solid. Its a matter of seeing if an attorney I can afford will take it.  I spoke with an attorney the 4th of Sept. I'm waiting on an answer. If your a praying person , praying that this is resolved expeditiously so I can sell the house would be appreciated. The way it is now I can't even legally rent it out . The idea was rent it out and get on the water at one of the area lakes if all else fails, while I'm waiting for this other deal comes through. So far it's a catch 22, I'm between a rock and a hard place. 
That's about all for now.
Sail safe but sail!

It's About Boats and Money

As some of you know, we left the area for what was supposed to be a job for a while. The job turned out to be a nightmare. The good news out of all of that is, the baby boy got his on place and is doing very well. I got back in June I think it was. Came home to a disaster and have been working on getting it all squared away. Moral of that story is when your gut says DO NOT DO SOMETHING, DO NOT DO IT!

 I came back to a massive roach infestation. Fogged the house twice. The second time I used 2x the recommended amount of bombs, did the attic and under the house in the crawl space. You could not tell it was done a week later.  We have a honey suckle bush out side. I found out that roaches make their nest in the roots. Guess what is going to get tore out?

We came to the conclusion that they were getting under the wood work and behind the cabinets and going out side when we sprayed and bombed. In pure retaliation,  I've spent the last month  going through the  entire house and caulking each and every nook and cranny that exist.  All  of the wood work and trim is getting caulked. If  I can slip a paper into it, it gets caulked. If I think any form of life, including a germ,  can squeeze it's way into the slightest crack, it is getting caulked.  I am seeing a dramatic improvement. A large reduction in the number of  beasties is now the daily norm. I'm still seeing a few and on some days more them others . The over all numbers are dropping.  I called the place I used to get my concentrated bug killer from. They don't sell it any more. Seems the feds have decided that regular people can't possibly use a product safe enough to be trusted with it. That really stinks as it was some really good stuff. That's OK, where there is a will there is a way and I found a different supplier. It's a different brand and a lot more expensive but it should work.

Have been working on the little boat off and on. I finally broke down and bought another sander. The plan  is to order repair kits, extra brushes etc, this month.  Have the bottom and one side done on the first rough sanding.  It's looking pretty good.  I Need to order more disk but that's just part of it.

Mainly the "boat orientated work" has been exploring how I'm going to earn a living while living on board full time. I've come to the conclusion none of my ideas is going to make me rich. If however, I put a bunch of small things together, they could add up to a useable amount of cash.  They say if your going to write, write what you know about. I know about honey do's on the cheap, raising a multiply challenged son as a single mom and living on subsistence income level.   This is marketable, especially in the present economy. There are a few other aspects I'm reasonably well versed in that ties into  the  part of raising a multiply challenged son, so that will fit in as well. It won't make me rich but it will all help.

One thing I have had to admit. Social networking for the self publisher is a have to. Face book I was already on. Today I did what I thought I would never do. I  joined Twitter, as well as a writing hub.
There are some very interesting post on the hub. I looked up to see what I could find on sailing and was very pleasantly surprised. Add that to doing the Amazon Kindle thing, the Nook Book thing on B&N, the affiliate thing and who knows I could actually make a dollar or two.  The hard part is learning how to use all these resources and keeping them straight  in my mind.  Just looking at all that makes me feel like I'm back in school cramming for finals!

 Then there is the HAM thing. I have had getting my Ham license on my mind for years. Sailing and Ham, in my opinion just go together. Can you imagine the distance you can get on the water? I know Hams talking all over the planet to each other is no big thing. It is done all the time. It is still awe inspiring to me just thinking about it. Then there is the part about being able to send emails over HAM, not to mention the other aspects of being in touch with others while out in the middle of the big blue.

Put it all together;  Yes, I have been working on my goal of living aboard and sailing all week. The part that really BITES IS I have not gotten one silly thing one on any of the boats except for a bit of sanding.

It's all good.  One day at a time and when that gets to weird one thing at a time. It will all get done.
Sail safe but sail!

Landscaping: Plug it!

For the past couple of yard our yard has been dirt.  Plugs cost money. Reseeding with two active dogs seemed like a waster of time We had some old seed we thought would be to dead to plant but what the heck just in case, we threw back in the back yard to see what would happen. Believe it or not it came up. 

I looked at plugs. PLUGS are REALLY EXPENSIVE! All  a grass plug is is a chunk of grass root and all. Cutting our own to transplant in the front yard since its the beginning of spring and we are still here any way seems like an idea.
This is not a hard thing to do. You take a sharp knife cut through your grass down through the roots and into the dirt, then cut under it to get the roots. The thing s you wants LOTS OF ROOT!  Pull and you have the basis for a grass plug.  After I have a bunch  in the bucket, what I did was sit down and take a good look at each one. If it was large enough to cut into more  parts I did so. Its just like dividing house plants.

 

 This grass that we do have has not been cut yet this season, so we use  the same sharp knife to tip the plugs off. By tipping I means I cut the grass. We are literally gong to give the grass a hair cut. Make sure you do not take more then 1/ 3 off the top.

Plug Before Hair cut

 Now on to planting the plug.

 This is  not rocket science.

Dig a hole large enough for the plug. What we have been doing is digging 5 or 6 at a time  to keep the pattern right .

  Pour some miracle grow in the the hole.About 2 tablespoons is more then enough. I would use root stimulator but our car is down an I did not want to have to wait til we could go to a different store so we just not some regular miracle grow at Dollar General.

Plant the plug and your done with that one.

Looking good!

We did this in a couple of hours.

Global "warming" brings COLDER TEMPS?

What in the heck is going on with this weather? Last winter was a bone chiller.This last summer was like we were in death valley. In fact on many days it was hotter here then it was in Death Valley.I checked just to see. The first of June  was 105 degrees hot and it stayed that way  and hotter until all of a sudden in September it went to cool and now the first of November is is cold to the point of below freezing already. In  the over 20 years since I have lived here, this is NOT normal. This is more like upper Midwest not  South west!
 Now I'm fairly easy to get along with . I have learned to roil with the punches but this is ridiculous!
All the talk about global warming that I hear makes me wonder what the SAM heck is going on. How can we be having :global warming if the winters are slowly getting  COLDER?
This gal has had enough!

Polyester, Woood and Wood Stoves.

 On this page I am  making the pics larger then normal to show detail. I'm not sure if it will make it upload a lot slower and be a pain  for viewers. Please , feedback on this would really be appreciated! Thanks. 


Poly trimming was good practice for using the Dremel I used the EZ lock cutting blade and was very pleasantly surprised how it did and how long it lasted. 




 Resin  I am using for this part of project 

The resin  container says it is water proof. This is their general all purpose house hold use bondo. The little tube is the hardener that came with it. The small bottle is what I bought at Oreillys. The mixing bowl I got from Oreillys. I really like them, They cleanup really well with an acetone soaked rag and if you look a the photo below you can see it has multiple markings for different types of resin. Not bad for less then a buck

It originally has Bondo liquid hardener  written on it but the lettering came off as I used it due to sticky hands from resin.

  Love all the markings. A good all purpose  "disposable" resin bowl.  I did not need the markings using the Bondo but it will sure come in handy when I get to the point of learning how to use 2 part  Epoxy.






 If you remember what I had after the poly cured was a real mess around the edges from having the plastic I used underneath. 

Front

  

Back

               Some close ups of the mess  on V berth tip  board.

 Shots of the trim job in process
  I forgot about taking shots before I started this but you can still get the general idea. I started by just taking it off a little bit at a time with scissors. Probably not a great idea but it got the largest part of it off. .If I had to do it all over again, I  would use the Dremel for this part.

You can see where the resin from both sides overflowed the board.

I now know how to make ice cycles out of resin. 

The back of the first board I did  No plastic under the board..

the resin sealed the edges really well in various places. It seemed a pity to cut it off but it had to happen to fit.

Front

Back

See the void?

Separation of cloth due to plastic moving things around so I could not keep the cloth in place. Next time I think I will use staples to keep cloth in place.

 Time to use the Dremel.

First we take off the biggest part, making sure we leave enough room to not gouge the wood.

                       

                              Close ups of what we have left

 On to the porta pottie board.

Ready for final sanding to pretreat top side.

    Just so  every one  knows I do use safety gear. Glasses and a mask rated for fiberglass.

   
          
           My Blue heeler standing by  to  make sure I get it right. 


  I still have to sand the excess poly off the front as that looks really tacky and has to be done before  I pre treat  for poly on the top sides but one step at a time I'm getting it done.

Looking GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even that first board I did for the  porta pottie looks decent  on the edges now that it is trimmed up.

 I got busy with starting the job of trimming up the wood for the bulkhead between the bow flotation and the new storage space. Am using the wood that was in the middle section. It is a tad to short across the beam but I can use a board stretcher made out of the other piece to fill in  the gaps.  I HATE throwing perfectly good wood away, Once it is in place and fiber glassed,  it will be fine.  For those if you that do not know what a board stretcher is, it is simply adding extra pieces where it is to short.




See the weave
These are close up shots of the first board I polyed. I did not know about pre treating it. You can see the weave of the cloth which as I understand it is a bad thing. Even I can tell  this is not a good thing when compared to the board I pretreated with the diluted poly. This board, if put under water for a sustained period of time, I do not doubt for a minute would have severe delamination and form blisters.  
This is I suspect why so may are down on using poly based resin for boat repair. When it comes to the hull or rudder, there is no way I would use polyester based resin. But  for my purposes of interior it should be fine. Heaven forbid me ever being proven right about this by my boat being underwater! The board I pre treated with the diluted poly s does NOT have this problem.

 V  Berth Storage Bulkhead

                                                                                                 
 I was truly surprised how long that one cutter lasted. I started out with trying to use my sons battery operated circular saw. The blade is getting really dull  and the batteries are needing replaced, so I changed over to the EZ lock on my Dremel.  I finished the  second slant cut with it, did all the trimming on the two v berth pieces and   got one of the hull notches done before I needed to change blades. Not to bad IMHO for one blade. It was burning the wood instead of cutting it by the time I got to the  second        notch.                                                                                                               
 
That's all for now on the boat. 




We finally got the wood stove ready. It was covered up out side but still got rusted. I guess metal absorbs moisture even if it is covered really well. Any way to make along story short we had  a mess. It got rusted and I was NOT going to put it back in the house looking like that. I went out to Ace hardware to get some primer and stove paint. 

While I was there John  ( manager) reminded me about rust converters. He showed me a product but I did not like the idea of it turning a gray or white color.  I noticed a little bottle of Rustoleum Rust reformer sitting up stop shelf so even at 8 dollars plus  for a 8 oz bottle  I bought it since it turned the rust black, which was more in line with what I had seen on you tube videos about another product. Plus I figured if it went well I would not have to repaint. I was not looking forward to  having to have the guys brush all that rust off, sand it level  and then prime and repaint that stove. Long story short, it took a couple of coats to do it.  On some really bad spots we used three and four coats but it looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself.  It is a more rustic look then if we had sanded it and painted it but that is OK.  I don't think any one but me is going to care about that. I do want to put a light coat  of paint over it later so it matches the stove pipe better . We sprayed the chrome pipe so it matches . One thing I do need to mention if you use the rust converter  or paint on a stove MAKE REAL SURE YOU BURN IT WITH A REALLY GOOD SOLID STRONG HOT FIRE BEFORE YOU PUT IT IN HOUSE! That first fire is going to stink so bad it will drive you out of the House! PLEASE TRUST ME ON THIS! WE PUT A PAPER FIRE IN IT THINKING THAT WOULD DO.  I WAS SO WRONG!!!! 
 It ended up taking the best part of 2 bottles but it was worth it in just the work saved of not having to brush, sand, prime and paint the stove.

Shots of in progress stove rust conversion to show the color after rust conversion.

Not to shabby

Looking good and working just fine!!!!!!!!!

 I finally got around to ordering the parts for the Lumina.  100 bucks USD but what are you gonna do?  It has to be done.  We basically are replacing the entire  coolant over flow system. 

I can't believe how much they want for new tires for this van! It is outrageous! 500.00 for tires? I'm having my son go  check out the salvage yards.  Same issue for the boat trailer  and little trailer.
 One thing at a time it will get done. 

 The house is getting really close to  being done. Have a lot of little stuff still to do then we are good to go.




That's all for now. Sail safe but sail


 And never forget to USE DA GREY MATTER