ANOTHER WEEKS RECAP

Ocean View Marina
Samal Island, Davao
Mindanao, Philippines

Another week of life on the hard and here is the recap. Kathy has had help in her projects from Miss Bing a local Filipina who Kathy has trained in cleaning the boats interior, exterior and most recently all the stainless hardware that came off the mast. Using polish, rags and bronze wool all the parts are getting clean.

POLISHING AWAY

My first two days of the week were trips to the city for supplies. I was not organized enough on what I needed on Mondays trip requiring a second trip on Tuesday. Our workers Do- Do and Yo- Yo finished the sanding of the bottom on Monday and then moved on to sanding the old paint off the mast, boom and other painted parts. Ta-Ta continued with taking the various fittings off the mast and boom.

Once again we had the arrival of a box of stuff that had been shipped from the states. Lots of boat parts and things that we just cannot buy here in the Philippines. Kathy had spent Tuesday unloading the box and then on Wednesday we both managed to sort and get things put away. It would be so much easier if you could just drive on down to the local hardware store but that would ruin the adventure.

Thursday Kathy was off on here big shopping trip to the Costco like store and I started on my project of filling the numerous but unnecessary holes that were in the mast and boom. Previously those holes were just filled with stainless machine screws. The dissimilar metals causing corrosion and not truly looking good. After doing some internet research I felt the best approach was to use threaded aluminum plugs epoxied in to the holes. After priming and painting the mast and boom hopefully would look new,

THESE ARE ONLY A FEW OF THE HOLES

TAPPING FOR THE PLUG

THREADING THE ALUMINUM ROD

METAL EPOXY

A FEW TURNS INTO THE BOOM

READY TO GRIND OFF

FINISHED

 Counting up the old unnecessary holes in the mast and boom and then filling them required higher math but I knew in the end would be worth the time and effort. That's when disaster struck! A cutting wheel on the angle grinder came apart and caused a nasty cut to my left hand.

OUCH !!!!

No real harm but enough to cause a lot of swelling and the inability to do much for the last few days.
Now Ta-Ta is finishing the plugging of holes.

The mast, boom and other miscellaneous parts have been stripped and are now ready for paint. Today I finally managed to to remove the mast head sheaves. Tomorrow it's another trip to the city to see about having new sheaves made and a doctors visit as for the past month my left knee has been swollen and stiff.

Getting old is the S--t's but better than the alternative.