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