Me and My Boat: Garage Sailing

I had previously hooked up the aft light to the electrical system and I knew it worked.  I had also purchased solder so I could permanently attach the wire to the housing.  It wouldn’t be good if it came off once the light was mounted.  However, my soldering iron went kaput and wouldn’t provide the required service.  I didn’t want to make another run to the hardware store; so I decided to trust in providence and hope that the connection doesn’t come undone.  At least I have solder, so I’ll be set when I buy a new soldering iron.

After applying silicon, ‘spooge’ as Tim and I affectingly call it, to the fitting, I shoved it in place.  This of course was after I modified the hole so that the light would fit.  Again, I am all about jury rigging, so the aft navigation light, which is actually a light fixture designed to illuminate car license plates, was now serving a new and more noble purpose.

The navigations lights were on line; except for the mast head light or in the proper terminology, the ‘anchor light’.  I then turned my attention back to painting and applied a coat to the deck of the interior cabin.  Again, my boat’s starting to look pretty good.

At that point I called it a day.  I didn’t want to bother with the trim and the wet paint hampered any work that I could do on the interior.  I took one last look at the boat and went inside.  I was planning on watching some TV or playing Wii with my son.  No sooner then I had gone inside, I received a phone call.  It was Tim.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I just got done dicking with the boat,” I replied.

“I’m in your driveway, and no one is home.”

“We’re here, we’re just in the house,” I told Tim.  Marcia had taken my car and Tim obviously thought, incorrectly, that we were gone.

“Let’s dick with your boat,” Tim requested.

I hung up the phone and proceeded back outside and to the garage.  In a stroke of good luck, my wife had also just returned and produced a twelve pack of beer.  Tim and I headed into the garage beer in hand. 

I opened a beer for Tim and told him to stay where he was.  I then walked around to the back of the boat and hooked up the battery.  The navigation lights did their thing.  Tim said, “I see you got your spastically gay lights working,”

“Fuck off,” I retorted, “They look good don’t they?”  Tim agreed and went about inspecting my latest efforts.  Because I had just painted the interior, there wasn’t anything that needed to be worked on.  We grabbed the beer, climbed into the cockpit, and spent the next hour or two sailing.  Garage sailing that is, the act of hanging out in your garage on your boat pretending it’s in the water.  Not to be confused with garage sale-ing, the act of driving to a complete stranger’s house and buying their crap.  The later being a miscommunication with my wife when I told her to grab a glass of wine and go garage sailing with me.  She’s a woman; of course she thought I meant shopping.

Hatchs

As Tim and I sat there on the boat we took it all in.  The boat has come a long way.  The transformation is fascinating to watch.  I have kept a photo log of the work and can scarcely believe that the boat we were hanging out on is the same one I bought back in August.  It also seems sublime as I look at the pictures, knowing that I did all the work. 

We formulated a plan for next weekend.  We’ll work on the bowsprit chain, the interior padding, and fixing the main hatch cover.  I have come to realize, though hours of observation, that the main hatch cover is fucked up.  Yes, I did do a lot of work to it, and yes it has been remounted.  But, it doesn’t fit.  Why doesn’t it fit?  Because, whoever made the stupid thing in the first place didn’t know how to measure.  The aft end is wider then the bow, thus it doesn’t fit properly in the tracks.  I first thought while inspecting it, that the tracks were mounted incorrectly, but now know that it is the hatch itself which is the problem.

The initial repairs on the hatch, the edging, are directly related to the skewed dimensions of the cover.  In order to forgo similar damage it will need to be modified.  We are going to mount to pieces of aluminum to the slides to widen them at the bow end.  That should solve the problem.  I will let you know.