I hate, I hate, I hate working with fiberglass!
I’ve been diving into some leak projects. Some of my port lights are leaky. I’ve changed the gaskets which fixed most of the leaks but a few are coming from the outside seal. When I glassed up the cabin house I glassed around the port light trim, and I shouldn’t have. Now I have to grind it all away and re glass around the ports. I don’t want to fix the leaks just yet but I do want to stop the water flow with tape and sunbrella. When the dry season comes I’ll remove the patches and let the moisture evaporate back out the way it came in, with a good 7-10 days of sunshine. The last thing I want to do is trap moisture under the glass. My ports really need replacing and I’m going to start hunting around for a good deal. I need twelve of them. Looks like I’ll be running some backpackers back and forth to Colombia after all, ARRRGGGG!
Man I miss having a small boat sometimes!
Today we had some sun again, its nice. It’s good to blast Van Morrison, The Band, and Buffet and work on the boat. I’m a slave to Splendid but there are worse things eah? Restoring Splendid is a hell of a task but she is slowly becoming a fine ship. As soon as I get the laptop from the states I’ll start uploading video. I should start a “This old boat” show hosted by Alex “the tool man” Dorsey :)
I’m itchy from grinding fiberglass but you know what? Life’s good!
For some reason I’ve been sleeping hard the last week. It’s rare that I sleep the night through and I’m usually up and about with the sunrise. Lately I’ve been waking up around 8:00 – 9:00am weird…, but cool. I like the extra rest and I feel refreshed instead of drained all the time.
I’ll have a camera next week so I can start uploading pictures again. I’m cut off from Panama City this week do to the black Christ festival. Panamanians from all over the country walk a pilgrimage to Portobello for this event and it is an absolute mob scene just 15 clicks down the road. The buses aren’t running and transportation is impossible. I wish I had thought ahead and gone to the supermarket last week I’m down to rice & beans and nothing fresh. I may break down and have a meal or two at Hanz’s restaurant. A complete plate of Pork, Fish, Chicken or beef with rice fries and salad is only $6.00 and the beers 75 cents. He doesn’t charge for the dinghy dock as long as you are some sort of client, gives fresh water away and burns garbage for donations. I usually put a buck in the donation jar per bag of garbage. He is a good guy and works hard at his little business. He’s Dutch and came here about twelve years ago on his sailboat. He met his wife in Colombia and has two children with her.
I went to look at a motorcycle for three hundred and fifty bucks yesterday but it was a real piece of $H!_ Can you believe there is a Panama section on craigslist.com? The world is getting smaller. I’m hoping the right deal on a motorcycle falls into my lap. It would make life so much easier to skip the bus and go to Panama City whenever I wanted to. It would be fun to tool around in the mountains too. Some of these backpackers are traveling around on really nice BMW touring bikes. Some of the larger sailboats accommodate them and bring them and their motorcycles to Colombia and back.
Anyway I’m off to put some more patches on ports.
Sail far and live slowly.
– Alex
Published in Alex Dorsey
BMW’s and Sailboats can go together??? I better trade my BCC in on a bigger boat so I can haul my 1200GS around…. what a sec… my BMW weighs almost 500 pounds! Never mind! I’ll look for a folding bike. :)
There is extra gasket for the ports stored in the area across from the engine room. If you lift up the shelf bottom in the forward upper area behind a sliding door, it will be in that wasted space. There’s a notation on the shelf, but you might have missed it. The owner before me put it there.
Leaks… Arrrrrgh!
I think they come with the boat. I’ve been chasing ’em down since I picked up Panacea last February. I fix where it makes sense and it still gets in and comes out the same place. I’m checking all the angles, but they still exist.
Now the rainy season is just ending. I’ll loose my enthusiasm about finding them and have to deal with ’em again down the road. I’ve got 3 ports that need replacing, but that Endeavor has 24 ports and hatches. Great ventilation, but a bunch of holes in the boat to keep dry. Trade offs.
In any case. I’m trying to get a bunch of stuff off the hard drive and then send it up to Marty. I’m leaving a bunch of stuff on it. You can delete the applications you don’t want, but you can keep the ones you do want to keep. Final Cut Express is a good editing app, You can check it out and do with it what you want.
Take care. We’ll be in touch.
Capt. Paul
s/v Panacea
Oh ya know fiberglass well, did tons of glass work for the last two years on my boat. have many shirts with glass and resin embedded in them. Replaced all of the gaskets and 4200 on my port lights and some still leak. New upgrades are $800.00 + from Catalina.
In the next two or three years I’m going to need a bigger better boat maybe a 32 or 36 footer of course that means more work but its good work very much worth it.
It’s nice to see your back to your old self and seems like your having fun again.
I would LOVE to see videos of how to fix things on boats! Makes it easier to understand the process.