TRUE GRIT

I can now start my life of crime. My fingerprints have officially been sanded off.

Six hours of sanding today bored through several layers of skin and drew blood in two spots. Begs the question: why does sandpaper make the wood so smooth and my hands so rough??

Even the palm sander gave up today. The pad let lose from its moorings about two feet away from the finish.

Despite that I finished sanding the other half of the toe rails today. At least the bare wood. The hard part is DONE, grinding through layer after layer of weathered, rough wood. It's now slick as glass and beautiful. This burden has been hanging out there for months. What a HUGE relief to have it so close to completion. I could fly if I could get up off the couch.

Tonight we'll clean and tape. Then the week unfolds like this:

Tuesday: sealer coat on the starboard half
Wednesday: sand starboard with 150 grit and put on a coat of varnish
Thursday: 220 grit on the whole boat plus a coat of varnish
Friday, etc: sand, varnish

That routine will continue as long as I can stand it, up to 10 coats.

Next up: the wood garage that goes over the sliding hatch. It's about 3x3 feet of solid teak. The good news is it's not attached to the boat. No bending, squishing, craning, leaning, bumping.

After that's done I'll start the companionway, which has to be stripped and then sanded and varnished. Sigh. What will I do then? The bulkhead in the cabin.

Getting there, grit by grit and board by board.

I sure hope somebody's doing all this on the boat we'll eventually buy.

TODAY:
--finished sanding!!!!!!!
--made a list of things we need to buy
--got the tachometer working
--plucked the damn eyebrow off. it was looking dreadful.
--patched hole in sheetrock in Casey's bedroom