Old Habits......

Old habits....!  Hard to break arent't they?   Some are very hard and almost impossible to dump. Just today while driving down the street headin' to the boat, it came to me that I needed some 80 grit wet/dry for the re-non-skid job on ZOSHA.....no big deal.... without thinking.....guess where my trusty F-150 automatically turned?   Into WEST MARINE.....still unthinking like a zombie  in a movie, I walked in found the sandpaper shelf picked up what I needed and looked at the price....$3.99 !!!!!! NOW!! that got my attention !! Four bucks for one piece of sandpaper.....you guys gotta be friggin' kiddin' me!!! No wonder West Marine  has had a 66% increase in the value of their stock since October 2011, $7.01 vs $11.62 as of today. ... Anyways I didn't buy the sandpaper but went ahead and looked at some plastic syringes for injecting epoxy into the screw holes on ZOSHA'S decks after the teak comes off, six bucks for three, oh yeah...I checked out some 5/16" galvanized proof coil anchor chain, $4.20 per foot!....so I walked out the door and hightailed it to the local hardware emporium about 5 minutes away and bought the sandpaper for $1.30 a sheet, got the epoxy syringes for $1.52 each and checked out their galvanized anchor chain at $2.52 per foot. Will I never learn? Two life lessons here: #1. When my wallet starts twitchin' at West Marine.....LEAVE NOW! and
#2.  Next time their stock gets around $7.00 or $8.00 I'm gonna buy some.  Oh the hypocrisy !!
I am truly ashamed......
Take care my friends.....thanks for reading my blog....seeya

"Lets keep looking for the light"......hmmm...hmm...hmmm....

Remember the old Jimmy Buffet song about the Poet and his ole' hound Spooner? .....and how after the poet died and left all his money to Spooner..........Spooner lived "on steak and bacon in doghouse ten feet round"......great song ...one of my all time JB ballads.......You know what happens when you live on steak and bacon dontcha?.....you get fat....your butt gets wrinkles.....you get lazy....you wear your fat-pants all the time.....well, this kinda describes my world right now...only difference is no one left me any money....and the "steak and bacon" part is of course a  metaphor for copious amounts of the old brewski and my "doghouse" is a situation where I am not making any substantial progress on ZOSHA towards getting outta here.....fat pants are fat pants.........AARRGHHH!!! Yeah I know its winter, its rainy, you can't work epoxy in the cold, the dog ate my wiring diagram, and some one took my bottom paint and..and..and yeah...Tana....where did you put that varnish brush? can't find it!! .....if I had a lawn.....you betcha I'd be out there yellin' at that those neighborhood kids to get offa it.......See what happens to a person suffering from Sun Deprivation?.........I think I'm going to que up on the
 I Pod player that all time favorite song of everyone sung by the awesome artist  Maureen McGovern from the epic film The Posiedian Adventure ..........The Morning After.......lets all hum it together readers.....................

This is Sophia.....my GD.....she's hummin' along.....cmon' everybody.....

"there is a morning after....hmmmmm....can't you see the light....hmmm...lets cross the bridge together.....hmm...hm..hm...we're moving closer to the shore....hmm..hmmm".......... AHH! I feel better..don't you....OH YEAH! man this is great isn't it??.......I'm revitalized  aren't you??.....I'm Invincible!!!  Bahamas here we come!.....Que tal Puerto Rico......St. Johns stand back!....look out BVI's!  ......get back Genedines! ZOSHA is on her way..........Just found out that Ms. McGoveren is re-releasing the song this year....lets keep that in mind for all the gifts that we have to buy in 2012.........you guys take care.....I'm gonna go play it again...............ABC's "you're mine"....................seeya.......

Correction to my previous blog.....sorry!!

The CUT OFF DATE  for entries to the 2012 Singlehanded Trans Pacific Race is May 1, 2012  NOT 2010!! .....Sorry..........seeya my friends..........take care.........

When do they stop being boats....???

Yesterday, there it was....just laying there in my PO Box waiting for me to pick it up, take it home, and eagerly tear thru its pages of nautical wonderment and expert sailing advice from a plethora of its staff  of world renown nautical pundits....Yes, you guessed it it is the March 2012 #1 Sailing Magazine in the WORLD....now that  is their editor's boast not mine but I'll take em' for their word.  Actually, in my opinion, this mag is becoming more and more like a monthly sales brochure for yacht brokers and boat builders than a real sailing magazine.....this months boat that we all must have has a spacious
U-shaped dinette in the cockpit that seats 6-8 people...WOW!....it has a hydraulic platform on the stern that lowers into the water to serve as a dingy dock/swim platform...WOW..WOW!...it has it has a spiral staircase up from the cockpit to a fly bridge where the "skippers business" can be performed...."skippers business??"...spiral staircase!!...DOUBLE WOW X 2!.....it has a "penthouse living room" with large L-shaped galley with a dishwasher, full size refrigerator/freezer, sole to ceiling wine rack, 32" flat screen TV on the bulkhead facing a settee than can seat 8 with a dinette table that lowers into a coffee table...TRIPLE WOW X 4!....it has 4 four staterooms each with its own head and shower.......GOGGLE WOW!!  Oh yes, there were 17 sentences in this feature article that mentioned that this was a sailboat and it had electric winches, a carbon fiber wheel, and a square-top main and there were mesh fronted boxes to stow sheet tails.....I wonder if the author really knows what a sheet tail is?? Oh Yeah...the article also mentioned the boat can get 6.5-7 knots @2000 RPM burning 1.3 gallons per hour on one engine......8 knots at @2200 RPM with both engines running.....Man what a boat.....right? this monstrosity is a sailboat isn't it?.....it has to be....it's in a sailing magazine....It never ceases to amaze me what a person can buy for $1,640,000.00......!!!!
In a couple of months, June 30, 2012 to be exact, the 18th Singlehanded Biennial Trans-Pacific Race from San Francisco, California to Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii will start. This race is 2120 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean...ALONE!!! and is sponsored by the Singlehanded Sailing Society.
I thought that you might like an introduction to the boats who are signed up for this event as of the date of this blog:
Pearson Triton 28' -Darwind;  Crowther Catamaran 33'-Rainbow;   Ericson 27'- Little Bo Peep; Westsail 32'-Tortuga;   PJ 50'-Scaramouche V;   Express 27'-TAZ;   Open 50'-Truth;
Cal 40'-Green Buffalo;   Moore 24'-US101;   Moore 24'-Rushmore;   Wyliecat 30'-Bandiloot;
Nauticat 44'-Galaxsea;   Finn Flyer 30'-Harrier;   Tartan 10, 33'-Slacker.  A couple of things to take note of here: 1. This is REAL sailing,  2. These are real sailors,  3. Notice how many of the entrants are under 30 feet LOA, 4. Notice how many of the entrants are 40 feet LOA or longer, 5. Its probably a safe bet to wager that there is not a spiral staircase, sole to ceiling wine rack, dishwasher, vibrating settee for 8 or walk-in refrigerator freezer in the entire fleet!!  But then again the cut-off for entries is May 1, 2012...............the sun is finally out today so I'm gonna go down to ZOSHA and ........pound a few brews...its Sunday!!!
Take care my friends.............................

Don't Tread On Me....Part 2 1/2..

Its been raining for days....not hard or pouring just enough to screw up any plans to do boat work...tomorrow it's supposed to rain pretty good and then Sunday is purportedly going to be sunny....so maybe that will be the day that we can move forward with this re-nonskid project.
Last time I showed you'all the teak removal process.....remember all that "pound and pry" business. Today lets take a look at whats under that teak.....you guessed it....screw holes, copious amounts of caulk in various stages of its life cycle, dirt, mold, water!!, and little insect-type creatures...yep..some kinda itty bitty little bugs....not termites or ants...I don't know?? Its all a mess though...take a look:

There was water under most of the decking. It hadn't rained for quite awhile when this portion of the cockpit teak was removed. The backside of alot of the teak was saturated ......I'll get some pics on the next section that going to be removed.

Don't know why some of these pics came out black and white instead of color???

The caulk in some places is pretty thick and in other it is non-existent....no caulk at all? On my boat the caulkers did a haphazard job when laying the teak; however, so far there has been NO water penetration into the plywood core that I can find, Hallelujah....so maybe they knew what they were doing

The hard part of this whole job is cleaning and prepping the fiberglass decks for the non-skid paint....actually it's not hard at all....just tedious and very time consuming.....scraping that caulk off the deck and out from in between the thousand little grooves in the fiberglass non-skid...whatcha do is assume a zen attitude, don't think of the magnitude of the project...go after it a small section at a time and when you get fed up with the whole process..........QUIT!! for the day....grab a brew and visualize your new decks.

This little section took about 30 or 40 minutes to get to the stage where it will only take about another 10 or so minutes to get it ready for the paint.....its not done yet...but almost.....next time I will have better photos and show you the tools that I use and kinda walk you through the whole process again.....weather permitting....until then...........

Take care my friends.....don't forget to hug your loved ones today.....matter of fact, I'm gonna go hug Tanababy right now........seeya

PFD's...check, Flares....check, VHF...check, MOB...check, GPS...check, Running Lights...check, Junk Drawer...check!

Radio Free Darryl and Captain Thirsty have been on a rant again.....if you recall they were introduced to you all in the ZOSHAS WAKE entry of October 6, 2011.. you might remember that they had some interesting thoughts on how the Russians are controlling the world's weather with Nikola Tesla's secret weather machine that he developed for the Nazi's as a secret weapon in WWII and was confiscated by the Russians at the end of the War when they took control of Berlin.  Anyways, RFD and CT are ranting because the weather here of late has been horrible, rainy, cold, wet.....not conducive to boat work....or any other activity especially for liveaboards ......we hole up down below till it blows thru....often going a little "stir crazy"....as a result there is nothing new to report on ZOSHA'S deck re-non-skid project so I thought that maybe you guys would appreciate some comments on junk drawers. As long as I can remember, in every place that I have ever lived as a child, adolescent, or adult we, my family, or I always had a junk drawer. This drawer served as the repository for all matter of stuff....old screws, rubber bands, batteries, miscellaneous tools, gizmo's, whatchamacallits, doohickeys, thingamajigs, brackets, magnets, fishhooks, old candy, broken things, church keys, marbles, holy cards, springs, nails, pocketknives, etc., etc, etc. It was always  jammed full of goodies and packed to the very brim. More often than not it was hard to get open and shut because there was always so much stuff crammed in there. If you were like me, you never really remembered where all this stuff came from. Sometimes in a moment of  well intentioned orderliness you,  we, decide to organize the junk drawer and get rid of all the crap that we don't need.....RIGHT!!  So we  start out by making little piles of stuff: pile #1 is the good stuff that is going back into the drawer,  pile #2 is the kinda good stuff that we might want to keep,  pile #3 is the stuff we are not sure about yet as to what we are going to do with, and pile #4 is the stuff we are tossing away.  As we work through our treasures more and more stuff is taken out of pile #4 and put back into either #1, #2, or #3.....so after about an hour of screwing with all this stuff, we just say....."Aah, I'll do this later"  and dig down into the trash to recover those valuables that we did toss away and throw everything back into the junk drawer push it shut and grab a brew.  Does this sound familiar to you?? Man!! those big junk drawers are nice.....but now we are liveaboards and you all know that even quite large boats usually have little drawers and little boats like ZOSHA have minuscule drawers!!.... so what do we do for our sacred junk drawer? Its a dilemma all right!
In a house these junk drawers are often very useful and handy but on a boat a proper junk drawer can often mean the difference between life and death.....survival or not.....WHAT???  you say???  yes....listen to me .....boats are very complicated creations....some are engineering marvels....they are full of all kinds of paraphernalia that require specialized emblements to operate effectively. What happens when one of these things break and we don't know where to turn?  Where do we go ....you know it....eventually we end up at the junk drawer....looking for that odd piece of whatever that will fix our problem. My premise is that Junk Drawers are a critical piece of safety equipment for all boaters. It is impossible to try and purchase one of everything and keep it tucked away in the event that you might need it one day....most of us don't have the dinero to pull this off.....so we randomly replenish our junk drawers when the opportunity presents itself. Nothing wrong with that.
On ZOSHA there is no junk drawer........"Oh the hypocrisy" you say!!!  No ,No wait a second.......
What I do have is even better than a drawer.....I have a super dooper professional throw down Official Bassmaster Approved tackle box that serves as my vessel's junk drawer. You could live outta this thing. Its got drawers and bins and boxes and sliding compartments and trays and secret niches..... its a portable junk drawer on steroids. This thing is terrific; however, it does have an inherent dilemma attached......"how in the heck do you fill it up?"  When a little 1", #6, ss self-tapping flat head is twenty cents and a tiny ss hose clamp is over a buck at West Marine.....a person could spend untold amounts of the green stuff to properly stock a junk receptacle of this magnitude!  My answer is to become a scrounger.......my huny-bunny and I visit the local boatyards on Sundays or on Special Days like her birthday or today, Valentine's Day and walk the yard looking down scrutinizing.....  we find all kinds of treasures.....perfectly good stainless screws, lock nuts, fender washers, bolts, bronze screws and nuts and fittings, perfectly good hose clamps, all kinds of stuff.....we pick all this good stuff  up and it disappears into the junk drawer/Official Bassmaster Tacklebox to await the day when this obscure little item will save the day and complete the cycle and fulfill its manifest destiny.
Take care my friends..........Happy Valentine's Day........seeya

Don't Tread On Me....Part 2

Hello Everyone....hope your day is going well......OK..........Its time to demolish!!!!!

The first mistake that I made when starting to remove the teak overlay from my decks was trying to be gentle and first knock out the bungs and back out all the screws...........BOY!!!! was this a fantasy!!!!
First of all the bungs that don't come right out are in solid and require drilling and scraping out in pieces...a VERY time consuming process and when you finally get the screw head, they are almost invariably filled with some kind of solidified substance that prevents you from getting the screw bit into the grooves....so you try and force it and end up stripping the head...........a real pain in the ole' buttocks.....here's what you do....FIRST: determine what area you are removing....my advice is to divide up the project in manageable segments. On ZOSHA the first area was the lazzarette hatch and little aft deck.....the second segment was the entire cockpit .......the third is the port and starboard side decks ....the fourth and last will be the foredeck.....#3 and #4 have yet to be done on ZOSHA.

SECOND:  Examine the wood in the area that you are going to remove and back out all the easily accessible screws.....in my project, probably 1/4 of the screws could be backed out at this point ....on ZOSHA these screws were mostly 1", #6 self-tapping stainless steel pan heads.....these things are about 20 cents apiece at West Marine so save as many as you can. Once you have removed all the easy screws......get you circular saw.................yes I said CIRCULAR SAW!!!!!!  set the blade depth to almost the thickness of the teak and begin scoring the teak any which way you can. Watch Out for screws under the bungs- be observant here!!!  The more small segments you can carve out, the easier the removal process will be. See Photo #1

      

#1

#2

THIRD:  Make sure you have a hefty pry bar......don't do what I did....start with a little wimpy 10 inch baby bar......trying to be gentle....see photo #2.......that little pry bar is cute but worthless.....totally worthless!!! Get a big pry bar.....the one I ended up getting was the 18" at Home Depot......$11.95....I think. OK...once the teak is scored, pick a starting point and  hammer the pry bar under the teak and PRY!!!!!  The wood will come up....sometimes easy and sometimes not. If you are on a screw.....PRY!!! the wood will pull through the screw and you can back it out later. What you will probably find with all this prying is that the wood is saturated underneath and will pull thru the screw very easily.  Sometimes the screw will pull out of the deck.....check these holes carefully for water penetration.......most of the screws that you pry thru remain secured screwed into the deck.....this is a good sign that your deck is solid.....in my entire cockpit there were dozens of screws holding the teak down but only one pulled out of the deck.....in all the other cases, the screw remained solid in the deck and pulled through the wood. To me, this was the FUN part...........see photos #3- #6:

#3

#4

#5

#6

You'll get the idea now-just work your way thru all the teak hammer, pry, hammer pry...DA DA DA DA.....and before you know it, all the teak is gone and you are now looking at one of the biggest friggin' messes that you could ever comprehend and begin to TOTALLY REGRET what you have started.....this is where we will begin next time.....Good hammerin' and pryin' to you all.... Seeya

What comes first an "OLD DUFFER", an "OLD FART" or an "OLD GEEZER" ???

Hello everybody.....well, the day has finally come and gone. Yesterday was my birthday  February 3, 2012 and was the first day of my 65th year....OMG!!! Can't believe it!! We all remember, like it was yesterday, when we thought people this old were ancient, artifacts!!!.....but that all changes when you get to the point in your life when you have more years behind you than ahead of you. You acquire a new perspective on things......Heck, 65 that's not old.....60 is the new 40 right?....so 65 is the new 45.....YooHoo!! Didn't the ancient Greeks believe that youth ended at 80 years old??  OPA!!!  Einstein said the "time is an illusion"......Yeah! Yeah!.....Its Ok......my heart is young and pure.....excuse me for a minute.........................."quiet Tana its not funny!!"..............OK, I'm back.....
Got up this morning feeling great.....went into the bathroom to take a look in the mirror on this auspicious day........and you know who was staring back at me.................?

Have a great day my friends.................until next time..................

SEEYA

Don't Tread On Me.....Part 1

A few years ago when my heart went flippity flop over ZOSHA, right from the beginning of our relationship, I knew that there were ISSUES that had to be addressed.....but, being in love, they were overlooked at the time. Now the time has come to attempt to fix the flaws in her beautiful countenance.
When new, ZOSHA was given a magnificent teak deck. It must have been beautiful. Back in those days, the 1970's, boat builders like Westsail used real teak lumber not the 5/16" veneer crap they put on these new boats. The teak on the ZOSHA's decks is ............thick!  Somewhere along the line since 1978 those beautiful decks were terribly abused and/or neglected. They were scrubbed hard parallel to the grain! And you know what happens when one does this.....you scrub out the soft grain of the teak and gouge out long, deep grooves that get deeper and deeper over time....they collect water and dirt and mold and mildew and the bungs start popping and the more it gets scrubbed, the worse it gets. Its like scratching impetigo when you were a kid.....when ZOSHA came to my care, the decks were trashed....they were unsalvageable....half the bungs were popped and there no wood left to redo the bung job....the caulk between the seams was sticking up 1/8" above the wood itself and was breaking off and littering the decks with little black caulk pieces.....water was getting under the teak and bubbling up when you walked on a wet deck....making that squishy sound that you hear when walking on something really saturated with liquid. I knew all this and bought her anyways!!!
My intent, here, in the next few blogs is to document the metamorphosis of ZOSHAS decks.

Here she is waiting patiently in her slip for me to fix her............

Here is a shot of the teak decking on the port side cockpit......not pretty is it?........what a shame!!!

This view is of the starboard side cockpit.........makes you wanna cry doesn't it?........

This is a view of the foredeck.....its real squishy here........!!!

Well....these pics  will give you an idea of what the decks looked like when the project begins.....next time I'll get into the removal process.......until then....be safe....hug your kids and grandkids....call your loved ones that you haven't talked to in a while....and pop a Corona for me if you are so inclined....

Seeya........... 

Back to boat ownership reality.......Oh the fun!!

                                                                             #1
Hope you'all doing well-its been rainy here for a couple of days but it looks like its going to clear up and we'll have a nice weekend.......some of you might remember me commenting on my rotted sea hood and how it had to be rebuilt..? Well its done, finally, so I thought that I'd do the before and after photos. If you look at the first photo, its so obvious that this hood has been rotted for a long time...unfortunately for me the jack-leg marine surveyor that I hired totally missed this glaring defect along with ALOT of other things. In retrospect, I'm sure that he and the other other jack-leg involved, the yacht broker, were in cahoots. I won't mention names but if anyone is interested contact me off this forum and I will be happy to tell who these guys are. Take a look at Photo #1. What a mess! The plywood core under the teak overlay was mush......I didn't know that teak could rot but some of the teak strips were dry rotted and basically sawdust-I totally dismantled the sea hood and thankfully could salvage the frame. Photo #2 shows partway into the rebuilding process. Photo #3 shows the project pretty much done and ready to finish and make look nice. I decided not to go back with teak strips over ply but to construct a laminate of 1/8 inch epoxy impregnated masonite peg board sheathed in epoxied mat and cloth. There are four alternating layers of cloth/mat/wood in the buildup. Its pretty much bulletproof.

#2

                                                                                  #3
Just as I was about to put it all back together, on a whim I decided to peel off some Formica trim on the inside of the sliding hatch just to check it ........guess what ? ....you know it.....rotted as the bicuspids on an Eastern European hillbilly...so now the sliding hatch had to be redone.....fortunately there was some solid wood left and it wasn't such a major ordeal. Photo #4 after it was cleaned up so you can't see the magnitude of the rot.

#4

Finally it's done and reassembled, good as new, probably better than new, looks real good, Photo #5.  I finished the top of the sea hood and sliding hatch with the same nonskid paint that is going on the decks after I get all the teak off.......But that's another story.......

#5

Our target time to leave, Spring 2012, is fast approaching. I am moving aboard at the end of next month.....got just a few more personal belongings to get rid of....but there is a humongous amount of work still to be done with the teak deck removal and re-nonskid of the decks. Oh well-it will get done.

You guys take care and be well. I wish you all the best for the new year and wholeheartedly hope that all of your aspirations for 2012 come to be.

Take care my friends................................Seeya...........