Varnish

I'm apparently a varnish addict. I have suspected it for a while, but Thursday's volunteer experience confirms it. I opted to go sand and varnish Adventuress's deck house (the new one that replaced the ratty one i am living in) rather than go to class. This problem generally arises in march and subsides by the time i have put 9 coats on everything i own, and apparently a coat or two on things i don't own. (It was tough at first, but the dogs and cat are used to it now.) I have been putting a coat on the widowmaker's spars at lunch, as i was able to hang them from the rafters in the heated shop next door. Its amazing. It actually DRIES. I put a coat of thinned 50/50 varnish/thinner on the gaff outside the other day, and it took it 3 days to sort of dry. No wonder Port Hadlock was voted Varnish Capital of the World. It dries so fast! Not.

Adventuress's new deck house was built by one of our instructors years ago. It was very handy to be able to go straight back to school and tell him how much all those fancy inset panels sucked to sand and varnish.

Speaking of things that sucked, check out the interior of the widowmaker's cuddy. I painted every square inch on Saturday, and it was a blast! It looks like it was applied with a water hose, but i got it all (including the bare plywood hiding in there) and didn't get any on my favorite hat. I had to lay on my back and paint above my head and still reach the paint tray. It must have looked like the boat was eating me. Only my sock feet were sticking out.

Here are a few more shots of the weekend's work. Not bad for a semi lazy rainy weekend of painting and the occasional coffee break.

Here is a sign i left on a piece of scrap plywood for Eric in case he showed up while i was gone. I thought it was pretty self explanatory.

We are planning to paint the bottom on Saturday, and possibly rig her up on Sunday. Pretty exciting stuff. I realized (not that I'm hyper obsessive) that i have worked on a boat of some flavor every day for the last 21 days at least. I'm actually very ready to stop working on them for a while, and instead, sit in this one in a mild breeze and watch the clouds go by. I'm looking forward to a very satisfying weekend of tooling swiftly around the bay in my fabulous resurrected toy. Very soon. Very soon indeed.