DIY Hazmat Booties

While fiberglassing the shower sump, I wanted to keep my feet clean without destroying any of my shoes. How could I do this? I would almost need some form of disposable footwear!

I made these booties out of ziplock bags secured to my ankle with duct tape.

They worked great because they are plastic and wouldn’t stick to the wet epoxy. The only problem I experienced with them was caused by the fact that I was working on an inclined surface wearing slick shoes with no traction on a slippery floor. I was sliding down to the bottom all the time!

But, they got the job done and once the work was finished, I simply inverted the shoes and threw them out without making a huge mess in the boat.

New Friends

Cruising isn’t just about working on your boat in random places of the world. It’s also about traveling, meeting new people, and experiencing new things!

We met this couple and decided to go visit the caves on Terceira, Azores together. They were a lot of fun and we greatly enjoyed hanging out with them while they were visiting this island.

The coolest part (and how we got to know each other) was that their last name is my first name: Herby.

Head Refit: Solebearers Part 2

The bilge’s surface is fiberglass roving. It is far from smooth and I want to make the bilge in the shower as smooth as possible that way it will drain more easily and be easier to clean.

To make roving smoother, I could either sand it until it is smooth, apply fairing putty to fill in the gaps, or cover the whole thing in chop strand mat to give it a nice smooth surface.

Looking back, it appears that I chose the wrong option.

I covered the entire bilge in a blanket of CSM with the hopes that it would smooth the whole floor out and also give more strength to the sole bearers that I had installed yesterday. The idea was simple, the CSM would act as a sponge and simply hold a lot of epoxy in place while I quickly fitted the shower sole. Then the entire unit could cure as one big strong molecule.

This was a massive undertaking, and I was not properly prepared for it (mentally) First, being how CSM acts as a sponge, I grossly underestimated how much that sponge would soak up! I used almost an entire gallon of epoxy to do the shower sump!

Second, fiberglassing the entire floor means you have nowhere to stand while you work, so the entire time is spent doing boat yoga as you lean from your perch on the toilet forward and brace your torso against the bulkhead. This gives you only one hand to work with.

After a few hours of this, you get very tired and ready for the work to be over! I was going to install the shower sole but I physically couldn’t do anymore work in here. I will let this cure and add the shower sole tomorrow once this is fully cured.

Head Refit: Solebearers Part 1

The new shower floor was going to be lower into the bilge for one major reason: I am tall and could never stand up in the head! Lowering the sole will give me more headroom and allow me to stand up straight in my own shower for the first time in 7 years!

To do this, we need to install solebearers on the bottom of the bilge so that everything can be properly supported.

To prevent rot and other issues in the future, I am using closed cell foam as the solebearer. The force these little guys will be under will be purely vertical in nature. The sole will reach all four sides of the room, so there will be no lateral sheer forces subjected to them. Therefore, they do not need to be strong in a lateral dimension, merely in a vertical dimension.

They do need to be at the appropriate height though! I want the shower floor to drain into the grate where the sump pump will live. By making the solebearers incrementally taller, they will induce a slope in the shower floor which will promote proper drainage.

To keep them in place, I simply stuck them to the bilge floor with some epoxy and chop strand mat, then allowed them to cure overnight.

Beauty in the Boatyard

Maddie is an artist, adn she can see things most mere mortals overlook.

We have just been painted and the workers in the yard came and sanded off a few layers of our old bottom paint. Then it rained and the blue dust washed away a little bit . After the rain, we were simply walking from the boat to the town to grab some lunch when Maddie asked for my camera. I saw nothing in the area that merited a photograph, but I did not question her.

She instantly snapped this picture and we continued on.

She saw the blue bottom paint in the puddle mixing with the reflection of the blue sky and our bow, in a puddle of filthy antifouling paint dust. She found beauty in the light that was reflected off of rubbish. She has an artist’s eye!